ft 



THE RECREATIONS 



PRESIDING ELDER, 



BY THE REV. PAUL WHITEHEAD, D.D. 

Of the Virginia Conference, M. E. Church, South. 




NASHVILLE, TENN. : 

SOUTHERN METHODIST PUBLISHING HOUSE. 
i83 5 . 



■hlif- 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 18S5, 
By the Book Agevts of thi: .Methodist Episcopal Chuech, South, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



f W CONCHES* j 
I^SHlNOTOirl 



PREFACE. 



These papers were originally contributed to the Rich- 
mond Christian Advocate. I have ventured to acid to the 
series which appeared in that journal some articles which 
were written as editorials in the same paper, when the 
writer happened to be editor pro tern. The circumstances 
of their original appearance will explain local allusions in 
the articles. They are collected in book form with the 
hope that they may be worthy of being added to the list 
of volumes issuing from the Publishing House which com- 
bine entertainment and instruction. P. W. 

Richmond, Va., April, 1885. 



CONTENTS. 



No. _ Page 

1. Introductory 7 

2. A Kainy Day 12 

3. An Evening's Music 16 

4. The Old Preacher 21 

5. The Layman of To-day 26 

6. Earth-worms 31 

7. Deep-sea Fishes 40 

8. Two Deaths 51 

9. The General Conference of 1882 56 

10. The Thomasites 63 

11. Country Church-yards. 70 

12. The Quarter Stretch. 77 

13. Unconscious Selfishness 87 

14. Doers of the Word 93 

15. The Tunnel of Death 99 

16. Starting the Machine 103 

17. The Itinerant's Sacrifice 108 

18. The Itinerant's Wife 115 

19. The Old North State 121 

20. Gloomy Weather 127 

21. Systematic Men 132 

22. Machinery in the Church 137 

23. Music in Olden Days 141 



6 



Contents. 



No. Page 

24. Protracted Meetings 149 

25. The Death of the Old . , 155 

26. The Bed Sunsets 162 

27. "Custer's Last Charge" 167 

28. Ice-making 173 

29. Sorrowful Holidays ISO 

30. A Future State 186 

31. Hollywood Cemetery 191 

32. Monuments in Hollywood 196 

33. Monuments in Hollywood (continued) 205 

34. An Elocutionary Pulpit. 215 



Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



No. 1. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

ND why not? Why should not a 
presiding elder have recreations? 
No man has a more relentless and 
vacationless routine. He is expected to have 
no "hot terms" or winter freezings up. He 
is not expected to send anybody else in his 
place, unless he be sick or holding a quarter- 
ly-meeting somewhere else. Naturally he is 
to be. always well and never absent. He is 
not expected to dedicate churches, or marry 
rich people at a distance, or preach com- 
mencement sermons, or take excursions. 
Why should not presiding elders have recrea- 
tions, if they can manage it? And perhaps 
the} 7 do have them. If "that which cometh 
on [them] daily, the care of all the church- 
es," will allow, somewhere in the middle of 
the week they may find time. 

The present writer is thinking of taking a 
thought or so " on the wing," as it were, and 




8 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



bagging it for the benefit of your readers. Mr. 
Advocate; and while thus diversifying his 
employment of time, he may recreate his 
flagging energies, and it may be do good by 
a shot from a bow drawn " at a venture."' 
He " minds *' him — as the Scotch say — of the 
'-Recreations of a Country Parson." If he 
might only find the pen of so ready a writer, 
he might turn hours of recreation or enforced 
cessation of work to good account, and say 
many things pleasantly, if not wisely, in the 
course of the four quarters. Boyd, the " Coun- 
try Parson,''* wrote one of his articles on the 
paper held on the flat part of his horse's fore- 
head between and above the eyes, as he pet- 
ted the family nag in the stable, with the 
manger for a seat and the stable surround- 
ings for inspiration. (I see a stable now and 
then in my rounds where I couldn't have 
stood, sat. or been inspired !) That was an 
odd conceit : but I might seek a table almost 
as queer. The pine-leaves spread as a carpet 
in these woods may do: or that stump, more 
level than its fellows; or yonder fence-rail, 
broad and smooth; a big chip in the oak 
woods of home, or a rock in the glens lined 



Introductory. 



9 



with the ferns and wild ginger, loved from 
boyhood. 

On some such basis I can scribble what 
passes through " the musing mind," at times 
that call for no professional labor. And think- 
ing of whither it is to go when scribbled sets 
me to musing for the thousandth time about 
the press and its incessant issues. Every- 
where we meet them: the newsboy on the 
train, the black venders of newspapers about 
the depots, the counters of bookstores and 
news-shops, the circulars and " specimen- 
pages," with which every man is deluged 
w T hose name is unfortunate enough to have 
been printed in any wise. Books, pamphlets, 
papers, broadsides, plain and illustrated — the 
land is flooded ! For good or evil, with light 
or darkness; upon minds of all sorts, from the 
negro spelling along the road to knowledge 
to the scholar in his library. Who can trace 
the effects or calculate the power of all this? 

We must do our best to make our Meth- 
odist press powerful for good this year. It 
has already carried blessings to thousands ; 
let us try to get it into every crevice and cor- 
ner. The "Old Richmond/' with its edito- 



10 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



rials and other matter for grown folks, and 
"TTncle Larry's" column for the little ones — 
may its pleasant face shine in many a new 
spot, and brighten and benefit many a house- 
hold hitherto unblessed! 

The paucity of reading families among our 
people oppresses me. ' It is not poverty — the 
poorest often read most. Mr. Wesley's coll- 
ier converts were poorer than our late slaves, 
but they read. It is ignorance, it is intel- 
lectual stupidity, it is the rust and canker 
of worldliness: minds are sometimes quick, 
and even preternaturally sharp, but it is in 
the direction of money-getting, and not in 
that of wisdom-getting — celestial wisdom — 
•'-'the principal thing." 

There are cheerful spots and signs. The 
Sunday-schools; a family with tables that 
have books, some new and showing use: the 
thoughtful eye opened upon you as you stand 
up to preach (what man of God cannot dis- 
cern them among his hearers?); the children 
attending good schools (though too many of 
them contract no taste for literature); the 
conversation now and then breaking away 
from business, weather, and crops, and neigh- 



Introductory. 



11 



borhood gossip — these are hopeful things. 
But the leaden pall of ignorance and prej- 
udice, unlifted by any taste for books or pa- 
pers, or sign of any such taste beginning, 
that lies upon the masses! And while it lies 
there what hope of doing much good to such 
people by sermons and conversations? When 
reading and thinking people lose so much of 
a sermon, what hope that these will carry 
aw T ay a solitary grain of rightly- divided truth ? 
They w r ill have gone to church and gone 
home, and that will be nearly all. 

Let the preachers in the Church Confer- 
ences press inquiry third: "Is our religious 
literature circulated and read?" and speak 
words "in season" in- private; and let our 
intelligent people second the movement. 



12 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 




No. 2. 

A RAINY DAY, 
RAIXY Saturday — chill, gloomy, 
with a steady down-pour! No hope 
of service or even of Quarterly Con- 
ference to-day 1 Thank God. it is not Sun- 
clay ! Some cheer in that view. As the man 
of God who had alternately the gout and the 
stone, when he had one thanked God that it 
was not the other, so when some weeks ago the 
snow shut out a Sabbath service. I could bless 
God that Saturday had been tolerably fair, 
and that Quarterly Conference had been held 
with respectable numbers. And, as it has 
often happened, to-morrow maybe as bright 
as May. 

How nice to be able, housed and disabled 
from active movements, to- spend the dreary 
day in pleasant converse with a clever book! 
Blessings on the great printing art. which 
robs Ions' nights in winter of their dullness, 
and makes civilization and refinement come 
in place of the barbarism which fought all 



A Rainy Day. 



13 



da} 7 with brutes or savages, gorged itself with 
meat and drink at sunset, and then slept off 
the debauch ! Reading and pleasant friends 
can make agreeable even a rainy Saturday. 

What a grand agency of Providence this 
44 weather bureau " is ! 

The thirsty ground has been drinking at a 
great rate for many w^eeks, w 7 hat it so much 
longed for last summer, and for lack of which 
it nearly perished. Much of the soil will be 
fit emblem of an improving Christian. 44 For 
the earth that drinketh in the rain that com- 
eth oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs 
meet for them by' whom it is dressed, receiv- 
eth blessings from God." May it be so with 
my district! Lord of the harvest, send the 
spiritual showers! Where drought parched 
last year let times of refreshing come from 
the presence of the Lord this yeai^! There 
come back to me remembrances of some 
"years of the right-hand of the Most High" 
in my earlier religious days. One was in a 
place seemingly barren; but in answer to the 
prayers of some faithful souls in all the 
churches, there came such a shower of Di- 
vine influence as it will be impossible for any 



14 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



who felt it to forget. Glorious fruit of it 
remains to this clay; and some of it, if we 
gather up all the good resulting and connect- 
ed, " shakes like Lebanon." That and an- 
other great outpouring of the Spirit I re- 
member, near the same date, were in May. 

There is no reason why " revivals " should be 
" confined,' 5 as a veteran presiding elder said, 
" to fodder-pulling time." I have rather lost 
faith in the efficacy of set protracted-meetings 
regularly held summer after summer at each 
church. They come to be regarded as a mat- 
ter of course, and also by many as a neigh- 
borhood frolic or diversion. On the whole, 
they produce less and less in number, quality, 
and stability of converts. The meetings that 
come down instead of being got up, that 
force themselves upon preachers, keep the 
ark afloat. Arranged not after man's plans 
or man's wisdom, and especially with no par- 
ticular regard to man's worldly convenience, 
they break over the barriers of formalism and 
worldliness, and sweep all before them. I 
trust all our preachers labor for immediate 
results, summer and winter, to make a sav- 
ing impression then and there in every ser- 



A Rainy Day. 



15 



mon. Let them watch the signs and press 
the battle where the enemy's picket-line falls 
back. 

For the same reason let us discourage all 
set evangelists of the trade-revivalist type. 
Doubtless many of them have done good in 
various places. Some of them have done no 
great harm anywhere, but the general effect 
of their position and assumed calling has 
been to depreciate the value of close, steady, 
painstaking, patient pastoral work, and to 
narrow and distort the souls of the men them- 
selves. Even the Church itself cannot be in 
a continual excitement, and these men soon 
become of little account in any other circum- 
stances. Years ago I read in Dr. Nicholas 
Murray's " Preachers and Preaching'* some 
wholesome chapters on the subject, with piqu- 
ant illustrations from actual life; and I in 
the main agree with him yet, notwithstand- 
ing the Earles, Howards, Harrisons, and In- 
skips. Of course no man need, because of 
such reasons, forbear sending for help to his 
brethren in pastoral and other work not too 
remote from him and his people. 



16 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 




No. 3. 

AN EVENING'S MUSIC. 
[HIS time it is recreation, sure e- 
nough. It is nearly eleven o'clock 
at night — a rainy night, with heavy 
showers and a gloomy world of darkness in- 
deed to gaze upon when we go to the window; 
but "within all is bright and comfortable. I 
have been sitting since about nine o'clock 
drinking in a marvelous draught of pleasure. 
Dr. Watts speaks of his soul sitting and 
singing 

Herself away 

To everlasting bliss. 

I could not at any time, and least of all now, 
do much at singing; but I think just at pres- 
ent I could magnify the office of sitting; and 
if innocent earthly bliss — sweet prelude of 
the "everlasting bliss" — comes ever to me, 
it comes in the guise which it takes to-night. 
A dear friend, a pianist of rare ability, has 
been dispensing the riches of his repertoire 
with a power and expression seldom heard 
anywhere. The exquisite touch, the rare 



An Ecenincfs Music. 



17 



conception of the composer's very inward 
thoughts, and the perfect command of all the 
technique of the piano, are on hand to-night 
in unusual excellence even for him; and the 
noble instrument sighs and breaks its heart 
with Chopin, thunders majestically with Rob- 
ert Schumann, or sounds all depths and 
utters unspeakable things with the great 
Beethoven. If Sancho Panza was right in 
invoking blessings upon "the man that in- 
vented sleep," what inestimable good ought 
to be w T ished for the man that invented music 
— for that rare old Jubal, "the father of all 
such as handle the harp and organ," or some 
other remote ancestor who first adventured 
upon the art that "brought an angel down" 
to earth! I am his debtor largely. Other 
descendants of his, tuneless and insensible to 
the "concord of sweet sounds," may feel 
under no special obligations to him; but I 
can set up a stone at point after point all 
through the length of memory's exercise, and 
thank God for great enjoyment — pure pleas- 
ures, fleeting and ethereal, but prophetic of 
the world where all things are perfect and 
eternal ! I am not one of those who think 
2 



18 Recreations of a Presiding Meier. 



music is religious intrinsically. Least of all 
clo I dream that the greatest musical knowl- 
edge and ability have any power to work a 
change of h'eart. One of the greatest living 
musicians, not long ago visiting this country, 
is an incorrigible and desperate gamester; 
and another, immoral and infidel, takes up 
and puts down wives with Mormon-like fa- 
cility. But I do wonder that any thing "un- 
holy and unclean " can live in the presence 
of this glorious art. The strains that the 
mighty masters have composed and the skill- 
ful performer knows how to render, seem 
ofttimes to be fragments of the songs of an- 
gels that have fallen down upon us through 
some rift in the skies. I heard once, played 
by an orchestra of one hundred skilled play- 
ers, a slow movement of a symphony which 
was unearthly in its sweetness and purity. 
It lingers in my impressions as matchless 
and unapproachable. I can recall nothing 
of it distinctly, but my heart hardly beat 
while I listened; and after years gone by it 
still reigns in my soul, facile princeps of all 
music I ever heard. 

You see my district has a musical point in 



An Evening' s Music. 19 



it. There I will be able sometimes to refresh 
myself and comfort myself after the torture 
I shall suffer from barbarous doings in sacred 
music; for I shall certainly be put upon that 
rack occasional]} 7 . I affect no taste for great 
precision and excellence in that respect; I 
can hear and enjoy simple, unpretentious 
hymns and sacred melodies. By virtue of 
their own sweetness and by association, many 
of them are precious to me; I love many old 
tunes — some of them unwritten, so far as I 
know — that have embodied the pious aspira- 
tions and emotions of good, plain men and 
women innocent of musical art, ignorant of 
Handel and Beethoven, and the "classic" 
music of any age; but the tune devoid of 
character, a lifeless seesaw; the man that 
sings like a stick or a piece of putty, with no 
expression, no idea of tempo, no soul in him; 
the woman w r ho plays an organ staccato, or 
whoops with a constant and abominable ex- 
aggeration of the portamento (the gliding up 
to or down from a note w T hich artists use oc- 
casionally), "my soul hateth!" From all 
such, "good Lord, deliver us!" Let that be 
an additional petition in the Litany. 



20 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



Now and then I come upon spots where 
singing is "a lost art." I suppose it was 
known in the days of the fathers, when most 
Methodists sung "with the spirit," if not 
••with the understanding also." But "a 
drought has since succeeded, and a sad decline 
we see." The fathers that raised tunes, 
" where are thev? " and the itinerant sinking- 
masters, "do they live forever?" Theyoung- 
men and maidens are tuneless as the corn- 
stalks. You can sing solo in those regions, 
" no man forbidding." "The world of mel- 
ody" is all your own. Be it so that your 
voice is like that of a bull-frog, you must 
croak, or worship God by other means than 
"the service of song.''' 



The Old Preacher. 



21 




No. 4. 

THE OLD PREACHER, 
| O-DAY I am spending some hours 
at the house of one of our older 
preachers, retired from the active 
work. Bereaved of the dear companion of 
his youthful, brighter years, and with the 
time of the "sear, the yellow leaf " fallen 
upon him, he is nevertheless cheerful, hospi- 
table, reading and taking active interest in 
the Church and its affairs. He is full of 
reminiscence and instructive anecdote, tak- 
ing no gloomy, doleful view of his age and 
surroundings. 

How refreshing! Fori have known old 
preachers who were querulous and grum- 
bling, sardonic and bitter, sour in spirit, and 
continually asking, "Why were the former 
days better than these days?' 5 

It is a sad sight to see a man once eloquent 
and energetic, moving and charming thou- 
sands in the great congregation, now shat- 
tered by disease and bowed down by the 
weight of years; but it is far sadder to see 



22 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



him also invaded by the acidities and petty 
carpings of an unhappy old age. Our last 
years should surely be our best ; and it is well 
if they be pervaded by a sunny religion which 
sparkles and flashes and casts its heavenly radi- 
ance over gray hairs and dismantled homes. 

I am concerned about the future in this 
life of many of the oldest members of our 
Conference. Some of them have been un- 
fortunate, some improvident and bad man- 
agers; some have felt the hand of affliction 
heavily laid upon them; some of them have 
"no certain dwelling-place/' and yet cannot 
"take their turn," perform their labor, and 
be provided for with their active brethren. 
Our Conference collection aids them, the 
"Relief" Societ3 T fund grows slowly, and 
comes forward in a pinch; but the prospect 
is more or less cheerless with many. that 
it were in the heart of some of our rich 
members, who have made their hundreds of 
thousands in trade or speculation — perhaps 
this very year— to found a noble charity that 
would provide for such! Mr. Corcoran/s 
"Louise Home" for decayed gentlewomen 
is a charitv at once beneficent and graceful. 



The Old Preacher. 



23 



They are simply distressed and impoverished 
people of refinement, formerly in wealth and 
comfort, whom he relieves. Nothing is due 
to them for any thing they have done save 
acknowledgment of the faithfulness with 
winch they adorned their former station ; yet 
he felt how excellent a thing it would be to 
smooth the path to the grave of such old 
gentlewomen. 

But our old ministers, sick, worn out, and 
reduced, are men who once dispensed spirit- 
ual blessings to thousands, and as the agents 
of God's redeeming grace saved many from 
eternal death. The Church owes them shel- 
ter, sustenance, and relief from care. There 
ought to be a place provided, beautiful and 
comfortable — an earthly ante-chamber of 
heaven — in which these old soldiers of the 
cross could wait for the messenger bringing 
everlasting rest and glory. 

But why suggest that rich men should do 
this? Cannot the multitude of men of little 
means, who yet have something to give, and 
above all, generous hearts, unite in its ac- 
complishment? Perhaps they might, but 
upon them is being thrown every burden. 



24 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



They it is, not the rich, who furnish the reg- 
ular support of the ministry; who keep up 
our regular collections, who relieve the bulk 
of the poor, and sustain our religious news- 
papers and publishing interests. If our col- 
leges are ever endowed they will probably 
have to do it by slow and steady giving, for 
it is plain to ray mind that the rich are not 
going to do it. Men who put 850,000 in a 
house, and spend thousands upon luxurious 
furniture and living — whose annual outlay in 
their families is twenty or thirty times the 
living of many generous and self-sacrificing 
plain men — think they have done great things 
in donating five or six thousand to a college. 
Occasionally one gives an organ or a steeple, 
or a ten-thousand-dollar church, and thinks 
he has exhausted Christian benevolence for 
the rest of his life; or, if a twinge of con- 
science take him in "a cold snap,'' consoles 
himself by spending a few hundreds upon 
the freezing poor. Our D'Arcy Pauls have 
no successors yet. The really rich dare not 
apply to their income a scale of giving like 
his. To think of doing so would frighten 
them out of a week's sleep ! 



The Old Preacher. 



25 



Meantime, while this provision for the aged 
and worn-out remains unconstructed, I am 
daily admiring the courage and devotion and 
self-sacrifice of the average preacher. Men 
who have the gifts and energy and education 
to have made abundance, if not riches, in any 
ordinary business, are living on salaries of 
from $500 to $850, and "managing some- 
how 5 ' to clothe and feed their families — ■ 
often large ones — and educate the boys and 
girls. For Christ's sake, for the glory of his 
name and the advancement of his cause, they 
" gladly wander up and down, and smile at 
toil and pain." Surely the days of heroism 
are not past ! 

And I am not reproaching our people. 
They do better for their preachers, as a whole, 
than others do for theirs. If their ministe- 
rial lottery has no prizes, it has few or no 
blanks 



26 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



No. 5. 

THE LAYMAN OF TO-DAY. 
P ray journeyings bring to my 
knowledge the heroism and devo- 
tion of the average preacher, they 
do not the less reveal the worth and piety 
and fidelity of the average layman. 

In our Church, in town and country, he 
belongs to the middle class— a denomination 
not at all answering to what is so called in 
England, where it means, almost always, a 
shop-keeper of some sort: and still less an- 
swering to the shop class in Germany and 
Continental Europe generally, where the 
word they use implies a doubtful honesty as 
well as lack of refinement; but correspond- 
ing to the yeomen of 44 Merry England " and. 
the burgher of the Middle Ages — the class in 
which liberty has always flourished. 

If lie be a farmer, he is of the independent 
kind who are ready to reply to offers of place 
and promotion, 44 1 dwell among mine own 
people;'* if a merchant or mechanic, he is 
of the thriftier class, who do honest work, 




The Layman of To-day. 



27 



and manage to get paid for it. No serf or 
bondsman, he owns his land; and in his home, 
more or less comfortable, shelters the nest- 
lings of his heart. In trade he is no restless 
speculator dreaming of wealth well-nigh 
gambled for, driving every thing with head- 
long speed and godless absorption, but a 
steady man of business, undertaking things 
in a square and natural way; in no fever of 
hurry, and yet " not slothful in business." 

Otttimes he is a "Johnny Reb." Perhaps 
in the bloom of youth he followed the flag 
of the "Lost Cause," and mostly as a "high 
private," but sometimes with rank still rec- 
ognized in his present title, came out of 
bloody war's alarms. Oftener than otherwise 
he bears upon his person in more places than 
one the certificate of his bravery; and gen- 
erally in his quiet but determined look, in 
his modest yet gallant bearing, his candid, 
straightforward talk, you discern the signs 
of a man who did not linger behind when a 
charge was ordered, or in the hour of peril 
skulk behind some base subterfuge. 

In not a few instances he came out of the 
war to confront utter poverty; but he took 



28 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



hold in good fashion, wasted no time in vain 
regrets, sold none of the "grit" in him for 
" a mess of pottage" mixed with political dirt, 
and has progressed surprisingly. The inher- 
ent recuperative powers of such a man have 
been displayed. In many cases he is "well 
to do " in every respect; in no case does he eat 
"'the bread of idleness/" but breasts the waves 
of adverse fortune with a cheerful courage. 

By such men the prostrate work of our 
Church has been set upon its legs; churches 
burned or pulled down in war, or decayed 
and forsaken, have been rehabilitated or re- 
built; the preacher finds "homes " unknown 
to the old ante helium itinerant; Sunday- 
schools and other evangelical agencies "blos- 
som as the rose." These men make our " New 
Virginia" in the Methodist sense. The 
armed hee-1 of Mars trampled the life out of 
the Old Virginia in many places, but the new 
crop is in full vigor. 

Our average layman is a capital listener to 
the gospel; he is hardly ever a sleepy-head. 
Generally he has the Advocate in his house; 
where he has it not he is an inferior specimen 
of his order. Purity, true politeness — unaf- 



The Layman of To-day. 



29 



fected and unstrained ; genuine hospitality — 
free and overflowing, reign in his household. 
The children are good, affectionate, frequent- 
ly very bright boys and girls; they know 
how to work, and are not ashamed to do it; 
they go to school too, and Venable's Arith- 
metic and Gildersleeve's or Bingham's Latin 
books are there on the table, bound with that 
leather strap. 

There are not many doctors, lawyers, judg- 
es, and great landed proprietors of the old 
wealthy class, in our communion. Being in 
Georgia some years ago, I was amazed to 
meet frequently judges who were Methodists. 
Such do not commonly grow up here. The 
lawyers, as a class, are Presbyterians or Epis- 
copalians. We have a moderate share of the 
sons of Esculapius — the mass of that profes- 
sion, alas! know little of the "Physician of 
souls." 

But we have a powerful body in the com- 
munity in our yeomanry. As I looked at 
Brother Crooks' projected "Map of the Con- 
ference," and saw the thickly-strewn church- 
es of our denomination planted in every 
neighborhood, I said to myself — thinking of 



30 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



the day when Methodism met in Conference 
at "Ellis's" and " Lane's." in Revolutionary 
Virginia — "What hath God wrought!" 

Behold the building material, the "living 
stones " of our house ! It is " a holy temple 
unto the Lord,''' not to he despised. We 
expect to make it far lovelier, more polished, 
more beautiful, more capacious. Meanwhile 
we " thank God, and take courage." Vs T e are 
in no danger of disintegration or extinction; 
we trust that our ministry and membership 
carry "the life of God" with them; we will 
get rid of the tilings that offend." "Ev- 
ery branch in me that beareth not fruit He 
taketh away."' But all over the land we see 
these healthful trees of the planting of the 
Most High. The great Husbandman will 
16 prune" them "that they may bear more 
fruit." 



Earth-worms. 



31 



No. 6. 

EARTH-WORMS. 

OR pleasant -and profitable occupa- 
tion of many of my hours in travel 
and waiting, on rainy clays and in 
accidental leisure, I have been indebted to 
the English Quarterly Reviews — favorites from 
boyhood. I always find a few articles in 
each that are worth the price of the Reviews 
for a year. Occasionally one will do a man's 
reading for him on a special subject, glean- 
ing the grain of many elaborate works, put- 
ting in short compass information from many 
sources ordinarily inaccessible to the common 
reader. They are suggestive, stimulating to 
independent thought in a high degree, and 
furnish in the course of a year many valua- 
ble illustrations to a preacher. 

This week they have interested me in some 
departments of natural history, into which 
I am disposed to ask the readers of the Ad- 
vocate to follow me a little way. 

In the January number of the old London 
Quarterly — founded by Giftbrd seventy-six 




32 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



years ago — there is a review of the remark- 
able work of Mr. Charles Darwin on "Earth 
worms." The veteran naturalist, at over 
seventy years of age, gives his latest publi- 
cation to this subject— the result of long- 
continued and sharp observations made by 
himself and sons. 

Few of us who have been concerned with 
earth-worms chiefly as bait for fishing when 
we were boys, or as food for young birds, as 
we have on a damp morning in spring 
watched the robins and sparrows pulling 
them out of the ground, have imagined that 
they were playing an important part in nat- 
ure's economy; but it would seem that He 
who chooses the base things of the world to 
confound the mighty has assigned a grand 
task to these obscure and lowly organized 
creatures. They are the little plowers of 
the earth, engaged in the production of that 
vegetable mold which constitutes the culti- 
vable land of the entire earth. Thoroughly 
breaking up the upper layers (their burrows 
being three and four, and sometimes seven 
or eight feet deep), undermining and sinking 
pebbles and other objects lying upon the 



Earth-worms. 



33 



surface; eating, digesting, and voiding de- 
cayed vegetable matter, they bring to the top 
of the ground a finely-ground earthy matter 
which is gradually distributed by various 
agencies over the whole face of the ground. 

Nothing can exceed the regularity of their 
industry. Ants and bees, heretofore regard- 
ed as monopolists of that high virtue, must 
stand aside in comparison. Nothing but the 
coral insect, that magnificent architect of 
the tropical seas, can be mentioned in respect 
of the extent and solidity of work; and he, 
like many showy workers, does great things 
in a region where they are out of the reach 
of the great mass of mankind, and which 
serve rather as curiosities than as useful prod- 
ucts. 

I give some extracts from this paper, as 
the subject will be new, and I think interest- 
ing, to many readers of the Advocate. 

As to the amount of work done by the 
Avorms, "Mr. Darwin quotes a German au- 
thority for an estimate that 53,767 worms 
exist in an acre of land; but this estimate 
was founded on the number found in gardens, 
and the same authority believes that about 

Q 
O 



34 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



half as many live in corn-fields. In short, there 
seems good evidence that on each acre of 
land adapted to the work of worms a weight 
of more than ten tons of earth annually passes 
through their bodies, and is brought to the 
surface. In England and Scotland the land 
which is cultivated and is well fitted for these 
animals has been estimated at 32,000,000 
acres. The astonishing but inevitable con- 
clusion is, that in Great Britain alone no less 
an amount of earth than 320,000,000 tons is 
annually brought by worms from under- 
ground to the surface of the earth. Well 
may Mr. Darwin lay stress on such an illus- 
tration of the enormous effects which may be 
produced by continually recurrent causes, 
however small.'' 

Some interesting observations are narrated 
by Mr. Darwin of their labors in carrying 
underneath to the depth of two and a half or 
three inches in thirty years all the stones of 
a field, some of them half as large as a child's 
head. 

Read the following to learn that there is 
vastly more in an earth-worm than is " dreamt 
of in your philosophy." These are revela- 



Earth-worms. 



35 



tions partly due to the microscope: "The 
structure of these obscure creatures is far 
more complicated than would be supposed 
by any one but a naturalist. The body of a 
large worm consists, we are told, of from one 
hundred to two hundred almost cylindrical 
rings or segments, each furnished with mi- 
nute bristles, and the muscular system is well 
developed. The mouth, which is at one end. 
of the body, has a little lip for prehension. 
Behind it is a pharynx, which can be pushed 
forward at pleasure, and which worms expand 
for the purpose of enlarging their holes as 
they burrow into the ground. Behind this is a 
long esophagus, in which there are three pairs 
of large glands, which Mr. Darwin says are 
'highly remarkable, for nothing like them is 
known in any other animal.' They secrete a 
surprisingamountof carbonateof lime, and al- 
though their use is not certain, 'it is probable 
that they primarily serve as organs of excre- 
tion, and secondarily as an aid to digestion/ 
Worms consume many fallen leaves, and 
these have been sometimes known to contain 
as much as seventy-two per cent, of lime. 
Unless, therefore, there were some means for 



3tf Rtrrtntin/is of a Prcsidiiirj Ebler. 



excreting this, earth-worms would be liable 
to become overcharged with it. Accordingly 
large concretions of carbonate of lime are 
found in these glands, so large that ; how 
trie}' escape from the gland is a marvel ; '" but 
that they do escape is certain, for they are 
often found in the gizzard, and intestines, 
and in the castings of worms. . . . The 
esophagus ends in a crop, and behind this is 
a gizzard, in which grains of sand and small 
stones may generally be found; and it is 
probable that these serve like mill-stones to 
triturate the food. The gizzard leads to the 
intestine, which runs in a straight course to 
the posterior end of the body, and this intes- 
tine again presents a remarkable structure. 
The circulatory system and the nervous sys- 
tem are both fairly well developed. Worms 
possess no respiratory organs, but breathe by 
their skin. They are destitute of eyes, but 
are not insensible to light, which affects them 
partly by its intensity and partly by its du- 
ration: and when a certain blaze of light is 
directed upon a worm it will sometimes dart 
like a rabbit into its burrow. They are thus 
enabled to distinguish between day and night, 



Earth-worms. 



37 



so as to escape clanger from the many animals 
which would prey upon them by day. They 
possess no sense of hearing; and when placed 
on a table close to the keys of a piano, which 
was played as loudly as possible, they re- 
mained perfectly quiet. . . . Indeed, of all 
their senses, that of touch seems the most 
highly developed. . . . Their sense of smell 
is feeble, but they seem to be able to discover 
by means of it strong-smelling food, of which 
they are fond, such as onions and decayed 
cabbage-leaves. In respect of food, however, 
they are omnivorous. Their importance in 
the economy of nature depends mainly upon 
the fact that they swallow an extraordinary 
quantity of earth, extracting from it any di- 
gestible matter which it may contain. They 
also consume a large quantity of half-decayed 
leaves of all kinds, and fresh leaves also. 
They will eat sugar and liquorice, dry starch, 
raw and roasted meats, and above all raw fat* 
They are, moreover, cannibals, for Mr. Dar- 
win found that two halves of a dead worm 
placed in their pots were dragged into their 
burrows and gnawed." 

The reviewer is no disciple of Darwin in 



38 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



the doctrine of Evolution. Giving all praise 
to the great naturalist for his masterly qual- 
ities and attainments as a scientific man, he 
refuses to admit the truth of the speculative 
views suggested by Mr. Darwin's imagina- 
tion. He says: "We still remain convinced 
of the prematureness. to say no more, ot 
what is commonly, whether with strict jus- 
tice or not, styled the Darwinian theory of 
Evolution." And at the close of his article 
he turns Darwin's own guns against him in 
clever style, as follows: 

"We cannot but conclude with one sug- 
gestion, which seems naturally to arise out 
of such a wonderful narrative. Is the ac- 
complishment of such enormous results by 
an agency so insignificant, but at the same 
time so exactly adapted to the work to be 
done, explicable on any other supposition 
than that of positive design? It is observa- 
ble that in this book we do not find any sug- 
gestion of the influences by which so singular 
an agency can have been evolved by natural 
selection. These infinitely numerous little 
plows seem to be expressly provided to 
prepare the earth for the sustentation of 



Earth-worms. 



39 



plants and of other animal life, and for no 
other purpose whatever. We can remember 
no more vivid illustration of the old argu- 
ment which infers from the perfect adaptation 
of means to ends the action throughout nat- 
ure of a Divine wisdom and wilL ,, 

That "old argument" is as strong as ever. 
In fact, the more observations "in heaven 
and earth" are collected by naturalists and 
scientists of the infidel school, the better for 
the theistic doctrine. These men " build bet- 
ter than they know." Their w r orks of careful 
study and patient observation will be mate- 
rial for illustrations of the Divine wisdom 
and goodness which will be ever fresh. 



40 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



No. 7. 
DEEP-SEA FISHES. 
AM done with earth-worms, but 
not with natural history. 
"The earth is full of thy riches/' 
says the psalmist; but he adds, "So also is 
this great and wide sea, wherein are things 
creeping innumerable, both small and great 
beasts." I am (thanks to the Quarterly) go- 
ing to reveal to my readers some of these 
marine wonders. 

I have always been fond of fishing and 
fishes. Many a pleasant hour of recreation 
have I had in that way. In the vast, lonely, 
wild mountains, along the banks lined with 
kalmia and rhododendron ("ivy" and "lau- 
rel"), among rocks of fantastic shapes and 
huge proportions, covered with moss and 
ferns of such greenness and loveliness as are 
unknown in other more accessible places, 
here and there coming on a wild flower of 
some unusual species, I have fished for the 
brook trout in pools of surpassing brightness 
and beauty, glassy and cool, of crystal-like 




Deep-sea Fishes. 



41 



clearness and purity. Or, in boats dug out 
of the bulky cypress log, I have glided over 
the somewhat darkened but still polished 
waters of a mill-pond in the lowlands, and 
anchored to a submerged stump or fallen 
trunk of a tree, have drawn out perch, pike, 
and green bass ("chub") from the teeming 
waters. If quantity and activity of biting 
be on the side of the deep lowland waters, 
ornamented with the pond-lily and shaded 
by the graceful cypress, the crystal sheen of 
the waters, the brilliant colors and shyness 
of the fish, the wild beauty and magnificence 
of the scenery, and above all the purity of 
the- air and the delightfulness of the temper- 
ature, are on the side of the "everlasting 
hills" and the " springs" which " run among" 
them. No deadly "chill" lurks in their 
glorious glens; the thirsty fisher can kneel 
down and "drink out of the branch" as of 
a fountain of nectar; and he will see only 
one rattlesnake now and then, for a hun- 
dred water-moccasins in the low country. 
Nevertheless, each region has its peculiar 
charms and attractions, and I have re- 
sponded in both to the Peter-like remark, 



42 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



"I 20 a-fishing," with a cheerful "I also g;o 
with thee." 

But I have never fished in the sea. That 
is an enjoyment yet to come. Of "hand- 
lines' 3 I know nothing, and have never 
caught drum or sheep's-head or blue-fish. 
Many of the "riches" of the Lord in 64 this 
great and wide sea" I have seen ; but neither 
I nor most of my readers, I suppose, have 
before heard of what I am going to glean 
from the Quarterly's pages. 

The late Commodore Maury devotes a part 
of his work on the "Physical Geography of 
the Sea" to the great "telegraphic plateau" 
which he first pointed out as stretching along 
the bottom of the ocean from Newfoundland 
to Ireland at, a great depth, but not too deep 
to admit the laying of a cable upon it. Be- 
sides the excellence of its freedom from agi- 
tation, he recommended it as free from both 
vegetable and animal life. Nothing would 
be down there, neither " small [nor] great 
beasts" to disturb or root up the cable. "We 
have now," said he, "had specimens from 
the bottom of 'blue water' in the narrow 
Coral Sea, the broad Pacific, and the long 



Deep-sea Fishes. 



43 



Atlantic, and they all tell the same story, 
namely, that the bed of the ocean is a vast 
cemetery." And again: "Where there is a 
nursery, hard by there will be found also a 
grave-yard — such is the condition of the ani- 
mal world. But it never occurred to us before 
to consider the surface of the sea as one wide 
nursery, its every ripple as a cradle, and its 
bottom one vast burial-place." 

But this has proved to be probably a mis- 
take. Whatever may be true of the actual 
bottom, later investigations have revealed 
that the deep sea, at from five hundred to eight 
hundred fathoms (3,000 to 4,800 feet — nearly 
a mile!) of perpendicular depths, where all 
faint reflection of sunlight is unknown, where 
the constant temperature is about thirty-six 
(only four above freezing) degrees, where 
vegetation is impossible, is inhabited, the 
world over, by a numerous family of fishes. . 

An article on "Fishes and Their Habits" 
gives highly interesting information con- 
cerning these wonders of the deep. Besides 
the absence of the sunlight and the low tem- 
perature, another circumstance, supposed to 
be fatal tcTany living creature at such depths, 



44 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



was the increased pressure by the water. 
••The pressure of the atmosphere ou the level 
of the sea amounts to fifteen pounds per square 
inch of the surface of the body of an animal, 
but the pressure amounts to a ton weight 
for every one thousand fathoms of -depth." 
Curiously enough this was one of the very 
circumstances which led to the discovery of 
the existence of these fishes. Hear Dr. Gun- 
ther. keeper of the Zoological Department 
in the British Museum: 

"The knowledge of the existence of deep- 
sea fishes is one of the recent discoveries of 
ichthyology. It is only about twenty years 
ago that, from the evidence afforded by the 
anatomical structure of a few singular fishes 
obtained in the Xorth Atlantic, an opinion 
was expressed that these fishes inhabited 
great depths of the ocean, and that their 
organization was specially adapted for liv- 
ing under the physical abyssal conditions. 
These fishes agreed in the character uf their 
connective tissue, which was so extremely 
weak as to yield to. and to break under, the 
the slightest pressure, so that the greatest 
difficulty is experienced in preserving their 



Deep-sea Fishes. 



45 



body in its continuity. Another singular 
circumstance was that some of the specimens 
were picked up floating on the surface of the 
water, having met their death whilst engaged 
in swallowing or digesting another fish not 
much inferior or even superior in size to them- 
selves. The first peculiarity was accounted, 
for by the fact that if these fishes really in- 
habited the great depths supposed, their re- 
moval from the enormous pressure under 
which they lived would be accompanied by 
such an expansion of the gases within their 
tissues as to rupture them and to cause a sep- 
aration of the parts which had been held 
together by the pressure. The second cir- 
cumstance was explained thus: A raptatorial 
fish, organized to live at a depth of between 
fi v e h u n d r e d a n d e i g h t h u n d r e d f a t h o m s , s e i z e s 
another, usually inhabiting a depth of between 
three hundred and five hundred fathoms. In 
its struggles to escape, the fish seized — nearly 
as large or strong as the attacking fish — car- 
ries the latter out of its depth into a higher 
stratum, where the diminished pressure caus- 
es such an expansion of gases as to make the 
destroyer, with its victim, rise with increas- 



46 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



ing rapidity toward the surface, which they 
reach dead or in a dying condition." 

Respecting the disorganization of their 
bodily tissues by the "expansion of the gas- 
es 5 ' within them, the reviewer says: 

"Their bones and muscles are comparative- 
ly feebly developed ; the former have a ' fibrous, 
fissured, and cavernous texture, are light, 
with scarcely any calcareous matter, so that 
the point of a needle will readily penetrate 
them without breaking.' They are loosely 
attached to each other — the vertebrae espe- 
cially; and unless carefully handled, the body 
will almost fall to pieces. But that this is 
not the animal's normal condition we ma} 7 
be well assured. It is due simply to the ab- 
sence of the pressure which keeps the whole 
organization compact; for, as has just been 
stated, most of these fishes are rapacious, and 
to indulge their voracity (enormous, as we 
shall presently see) they must execute rapid 
and powerful movements, to effect which 
their muscles must be as firm and their ver- 
tebrae as taughtly bra.ced as in their surface- 
swimming relatives." 

It is stated that many of these fishes have 



Deep-sea Fishes. 



47 



44 more or less numerous round, shining, 
mother-of-pearl colored bodies imbedded in 
the skin; 5 ' 64 as 'twere in scorn of eyes, re- 
flecting gems." 

The use of such organs is not known. 
They are present in those deep-sea fishes 
which have 44 well-developed and even large 
eyes perfectly adapted for seeing in the dark," 
and also absent in others which have no ex- 
ternal eyes. They are therefore hardly 44 ac- 
cessory eyes. 55 They may be 44 producers of 
light' 5 — phosphorescent or otherwise — 44 in 
which case it must proceed from the inner 
cavity, and be emitted through the lens-like 
body as through a 4 bull's-eye' Lantern." 

They 44 display few colors [except one or 
two species], and gay tints would indeed be 
useless amid 4 the gloom of Tartarus pro- 
found. 5 Their body is generally either black 
or silvery, but the silverness has a most brill- 
iant sheen, which is preserved even after 
years of immersion in spirit. A few are 
'picked out,/ as a coach-painter might say, 
with bright scarlet, either on the fin-rays or 
the filaments attached thereto." 

Of their voracity this well-nigh incredible 



48 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



account is given : ' 'Another remarkable 
property of some of these creatures — 'that 
woo the slimy bottom of the deep ' — is a stom- 
ach so capable of distension that it can hold 
a prey of twice or thrice the bulk of the de- 
stroyer ! Figures of two of these are given by 
Dr. Gunther. . . . Even with such a meal 
they are not always content, for though a fish 
seven inches and a half long was found in 
the latter specimen — itself not four inches in 
length — yet we are told it was tempted to take 
a bait.' One of the earliest recorded in- 
stances of this voracity was observed by Mr. 
Johnson, who wrote as follows of a specimen 
(of another and very rare species, however) 
he procured at Madeira, which had been 
found floating on the surface: 

The man from whom I obtained it stated 
that he had a fish with two heads, two mouths, 
four eyes, and a tail growing out of the mid- 
dle of the back, which had astonished the 
whole market ; and the fishermen one and all 
declared that they had never met with any 
thing like it before. At first sight it really 
did appear to be the monster described, but 
a short examination brought to light the fact 



Deep-sea Fishes. 



49 



that one fish had been swallowed by another, 
and that the features of the former were 
seen through the thin, extensible skin of the 
latter. On extracting the fish that had been 
swallowed, it proved to have a diameter sev- 
eral times exceeding that of its enemy, whose 
stomach it had distended to an unnatural 
and painful degree.' " 

This process of " swallowing" is precisely 
like that by which one snake swallows an- 
other as large as himself. I have seen a 
king-snake with the half-swallowed body of 
a moccasin in his jaws, which was both long- 
er and larger than himself. 

As the reviewer well remarks: "Even the 
unscientific imagination cannot fail to be 
aroused at the thought of the dark, cold, and 
still depths of the sea, lit up only here and 
there by the fitful gleams of their phospho- 
rescent inhabitants, which must serve but to 
render the mysterious gloom more horrid — a 
gelid, watery Erebus, peopled by submarine 
furies as fierce as those that tenanted the 
subterranean realms of classic mythology. 
What a contrast to the poet's vision of ocean 
grottoes 6 under the glassy, cool, translucent 
4 



50 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



wave/ haunted by graceful nereids 'sleeking 
their soft, alluring locks!'" 

I cannot occupy more of the Advocate's 
space, or I might tell of the " fighting-fish " 
of Siam, the "climbing perch 55 of the East 
Indies, and the group of Silurii from rivers 
of tropical America flowing into the At- 
lantic, which travel "during the dry season 
from a piece of water about to dry up, in 
quest of a pond of greater capacity," spend- 
ing sometimes whole nights on dry land on 
the way. 

But I am almost afraid to have said this 
much about them. Some of "Uncle Larry's" 
flock may have spontaneously exclaimed, 
"What a whopper!'' 



Two Deaths. 



51 



No. 8. 

TWO DEATHS. 

Y musings this morning are of a 
melancholy sort. Death has been 
speaking to my heart. He is a 
faithful monitor, an unlovely but a truthful, 
unfaltering guest, who will not suffer us to 
forget that we are children of a day. To- 
day he has broken the tie which held in life 
a lovely young friend, and uttered a pathetic 
sermon on the vanity of human hopes and 
the emptiness of worldly good. 

This is the second voice of the gloonry 
preacher. Two months ago he " hurried 
hence" a very dear friend of ours, a bright 
and faithful young wife, true and warm-heart- 
ed, with love like diamond and fidelity like 
steel ; unchanging amid all outward varia- 
tions. From her beautiful home, adorned 
by her graceful and cordial hospitality; from 
the clinging arms and prayers of those dear 
ones to whom she was more than vital air; 
from the prospects of happiness and useful- 
ness opening so fairly before her, he called 




63 Recrcaiiom of a Presiding Elder. 

her away; and our heavy hearts lay in sack- 
cloth and ashes. Thanks he to God! the 
consolations of the gospel were abundant. 

And now the dark, chilly presence is among 
us again: not unexpected; hut who is ever 
wholly prepared? If human society ever 
gives a lovely victim, the grim destroyer has 
had such this time. Beautiful in person, fas- 
cinating in manner, of marked intellectual- 
ity, polished and fitted to shine anywhere, 
with devoted kindred, hosts of friends, an. 
inviting earthly future — she whose absence 
makes many a heart ache, and leaves a va- 
cancy never to be filled, is " beyond the sun.*'. 
Yes. even yesterday, lingering as for many 
months, so patiently sweet, so unmurmuring, 
so submissive, with soul so cloudless and se- 
rene, so thoughtful and attentive, even with 
vitality worn to a thread, yet so truly here, 
and among us. and of us — to-day gone never 
to be recalled, forever out of our mortal reach. 
Only the worn frame., lovely in death, its 
tenant fled to celestial felicity, left to gaze 
upon a moment, then reverently and tenderly 
lay "ashes to ashes" in the family burial- 
place. Ah! "who could bear life's stormy 



Two Deaths. 



53 



doom" when thus it comes were it not for 
"the grace of God that bringeth salvation," 
w T hich has "brought life and immortality to 
light?" Blessed hope of eternal day and 
imperishable good! I shall see these dear 
young friends again. Unnaturally as it 
would seem, the bright, freshly- trimmed 
light of their lives has gone out, while mine 
yet flickers and holds out, with oil three- 
fourths gone and growing steadily dimmer 
at best. But erelong, as I fondly hope, we 
shall stand together before the blaze of "the 
uncreated sun in the eternal heaven." In 
the home of light and life there is " no dark- 
ness at all/' of death, or sin, or sorrow. 

Some weeks ago I wandered into an old 
grave-yard long unvisited, where sleep the 
bodies of a number of our ministers. My 
classmate, who w r as a brother so gentle, so 
Keats-like in genius and tenderness, advanc- 
ing so swiftly along the path of fame, but 
with still swifter steps ascending the steeps 
of spirituality and immortality, rests in its 
sheltering fold. There too lies the old, fa- 
therly, warm-hearted Irishman, at whose 
board I long had a seat; and there the chiv- 



54 'Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



alric, polished, impulsive saint, buoyant, full 
of faith and love, who formed part of our 
home-circle for several years. They seemed, 
to gather round me again, to rise and look at 
me with the ancient kindness and hearty 
welcome of the " clays that are no more;' ; 
and with them came, by the associations 
which their names on the grave-stones awak- 
ened, two wives of preachers; and I went 
back over nearly a fourth of a century to the 
triumphant death-bed of one of them, by 
which I and my old Irish brother stood, wit- 
nessing "dying grace" rarely given; for 
hers had been a "living grace" almost as 
rare. And all around me was flowery and 
sweet, green with the advancing color of a 
late spring. I like to go to cemeteries in 
spring. Let all around be symbolic and pro- 
phetic of the resurrection. "Thy brother/' 
thy sister, thy loved ones, " shall rise again." 
Unspeakably precious words! I pity indeed 
the w 7 retch who buries his dead without hope 
of resurrection and another life. In hope of 
such a resurrection, and of "the life which 
knows no ending — the tearless life" — we 
have been burying our dead, the faithful, 



Two Deaths. 



55 



worn-out servants of Christ, like our dear 
old Dr. Lee, and the lovely young people 
tenderly bound to us by ties of sweet associ- 
ations, upon whose soft cheek the rosy light 
of youth has so sadly decayed. And from 
such burials I can go to preach with a more 
fervent spirit, "Jesus and the resurrection. ,? 



56 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



No. 9. 

THE GENERAL CONFERENCE 

OF 1882. 

HATE saluted on their return the 
brethren of my district, clerical and 
lay, who were delegates to the re- 
cent General Conference. They look well, 
are in good health, well pleased, and bearing 
every mark of having been well treated. The 
splendid region of Middle Tennessee has done 
them good. Those of them who were used 
to the short grass of "the fourth district 7 ' 
have been wonderfully refreshed by grazing 
upon the blue-grass pastures of that fine 
country, and all have basked in the sunshine 
of the University of Vanderbilt and the head- 
quarters of Southern Methodism. Those 
"head-quarters/ 5 it seems, are not like those 
of General Pope — "in the saddle 5 ' — but in a 
certain "House/- which has had great muta- 
tions of fortune. But so it is, there it stands, 
upon the camel's hump, rather more settled 
and solidly anchored than since the war, and, 
for good or evil, it is head-quarters. Our 




General Conference. 



57 



brethren have walked around that bulwark 
of our Methodist Zion, and told its towers. 
One of our delegates (not of my district) had 
special charge of its affairs, and gives a cheer- 
ful view of its present condition and future 
prospects. 

But whatever may be true of the " head- 
quarters" aforesaid, there is no doubt of the 
welfare of our explorers who have journeyed 
thither. They are buoyant, in good temper 
w T ith "the world and the rest of mankind." 

My own impression is that this General 
Conference of 1882 was, as a whole, a suc- 
cess. They have made good selections for 
the episcopal bench, some of them capital, all. 
of them very good. They might have done 
five hundred times worse, and doubtless did 
not lack for temptation. Many Barkises 
were " willing," while one man elect declined, 
and another is said to have shrunk w 7 ith a 
whole night's struggle. God bless and 
strengthen that self-distrusting, reluctant 
brother! Make him a real blessing to the 
Church by giving him grace to be " sufficient" 
for those " things" in contemplation of 
which any man may tremble ! We are sorry 



58 



Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



to have Dr. Haygood come up missing, but 
we will wait for him four or eight years — 
thankfully take four where we would have 
liked to have six — and gladly excuse those 
who were anxious to wear the miter, and who 
;vould have been *' ; perfectly delighted" to 
have gone up in the ballotings among the 
hundreds. 

Wilson and Granbery, Parker and Har- 
grove — good men and true, strong, fresh, and 
reliable; they are a transfusion, of younger 
blood into the rather sickly body of the epis- 
copacy. We predict for them spiritual vic- 
tories and great usefulness. 

Xo marked legislation seems to have char- 
acterized this session. The laity especially 
are very conservative, and not - given to 
change.*' Beyond the Church - extension 
movement — in which we trust there is much 
possible good, and the more definite and pro- 
nounced temperance statute, there is little 
alteration of the Discipline. As usual, a 
thousand things were proposed, a multitude 
of absurdities, a grain of wheat here and 
there in a bushel of chaff. 

I still believe, as I have always believed, 



General Conference, 



that one of the evils of our General Confer- 
ence sessions, a great cause of useless con- 
sumption of time, a door of mischief and 
foolishness, is the "call of the Conferences" 
daily for so many days for "resolutions," etc. 
This "mud volcano" ought never to be 
opened at all. Memorials of Annual Confer- 
ences should be read and referred, but oth- 
er propositions ought to go to a "tomb of 
the Capulets," where a committee of sextons 
should quietly decide whether the thing pro- 
posed be worthy of resurrection by a refer- 
ence, and if so, put it in the Daily, with the 
name of the committee to which referred, 
and hand it to the chairman. A vote of two-- 
thirds might be allowed to bring up a matter 
for consideration without reference to com- 
mittee, and no debate be permitted on such 
a motion. Then only a very important mat- 
ter — so important on its face — would receive, 
such distinguished notice. One or two hours 
per diem consumed by reading and referring 
stuff, is time greatly in excess of what a body 
can spare in a twenty-five days' session, in 
w T hich all the interests and work of the 
Church for four years are to be reviewed, 



60 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



and its wants for four years more consid- 
ered. 

I trust that the next session, at Richmond, 
in 1886, will have a well-matured set of rules, 
which will prune off this excrescence upon 
our organization, long endured in pain. 

I gladly note some improvement in the 
reports concerning Annual Conference Jour- 
nals, coming from the Committee on Itin- 
erancy. With its miserable faultiness (was 
there ever a poorer thing of its kind?) the 
Daily has hardly given us half of those 
reports. I can count up reports of only 
twenty-four out of thirty-nine Conferences. 
Our own and the Baltimore are among the 
missing, "Report hath it" that "the old 
Baltimore," supposed to have an infallible 
secretary, and which furnished the two chair- 
men of the committee (Martin and Rodgers), 
got a good switching this time about its 
Journal. The rest of us who have been 
quadrennially " birched' 7 can enjoy this cas- 
tigation over trivialities, while believing, as 
heretofore, that in all that constitutes the 
real value of a secretary, there is no amend- 
ment or change needed in Baltimore. The 



General Conference. 



61 



feature of improvement I speak of is that 
there is less of the trivial and hypercritical 
in the notices of the Annual Conference 
Journals. 

I believe, for my part, that there has al- 
ways been an error on this subject in the 
work of the Committee on Itinerancy. The 
law requiring the Journals of the Annual 
Conferences to be sent to the General Con- 
ference for inspection was manifestly de- 
signed simply to bring under review at the 
General Conference the administration of the 
laws by the Annual Conferences; which are 
ministerial, not legislative bodies. It never 
was originally intended, I am bold to assert, 
that the manner of keeping the records 
should be the chief subject of review. It is 
the business of the Annual Conferences, pre- 
sided over by the Bishops, to see to that; and 
between the two — Bishops and Conferences — 
there ought to be competency to see that the 
proceedings, like those of the Quarterly Con- 
ferences, " be faithfully recorded." The prac- 
tice, which has grown up gradually under 
the direction of martinets, of attempting to 
force every secretary into one model of jour- 



62 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



nalizing, is an impracticable piece of folly 
which consumes time, produces irritation, 
and never accomplishes its object. 

The errors of administration ought to be 
brought out prominently, and corrected with 
a kind but firm hand; but the attempt to de- 
stroy the individuality of secretaryship is a 
mistake, and will be always, as it has been 
in the past, a failure. 



The Thomasites. 




No. 10. 

THE THOMASITES. 
IBAVELING the other morning in 
a freight-train, I fell in company 
with a "Thomasite," " soul-sleep- 
er," " Christadelphian," or something else 
of that kind. He was a kindly, conceited 
fellow, who imagined that he had the key of 
all religious knowledge, and with great com- 
placency an d wearisome iteration, opened that 
otherwise inaccessible treasure for the delec- 
tation of strangers. 

I should have been silent when he began 
to talk, but for the fact that he commenced 
with scoffing at the doctrine of punishment 
for sin after this life. That style of thing is 
dangerous in its effect on some souls, and for 
their sake I took a round with him on the 
foundation of his strange doctrine. It seemed 
to be amusing and withal interesting to the 
train conductor, a health} 7 , tine young fellow, 
with an open countenance and a smile that 
smacked of home-life and the thought of 
mother and sisters. Burns said that u Scotia's 



64 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



greatness" sprang out of its home life. I 
think I see in many young men's faces, as 
in that of this one, the place whereon the 
same blessed influence has written a security 
against spiritual shipwreck and wild wander- 
ings from the ancient and simple faith of the 
gospel. 

When it was all over, I thought of the odd 
blindness that makes a man of ordinary com- 
mon sense overlook the overwhelming evi- 
denceof the existenceof a soul in all men. And 
how a man who cannot see any thing in his 
fellow-creatures at large except " animated 
dust," mere organized matter — who takes his 
baby in his arms, and except for its possibility 
of after regeneration, regards it as a prettier 
sort of kitten or puppy, and if it were to die, 
would think it had gone to dust just like a 
puppy and no more — how, I say, such a man 
can fancy that belief in his views and hold- 
ing that Christ and his apostles taught them, 
and immersion in a frog-pond upon profes- 
sion of such faith can impart eternal life to 
these soulless creatures (!), is a marvel. It 
might make the gravest deitj^ in the old 
" Olympic round" laugh like a circus clown! 



The Tliomasites. 



6*5 



It has long been an impression with me 
that in the majority of these people " there 
is a screw loose" intellectually. I clo not 
mean that they are insane, or "cranks," or 
idiotic; but they are " speckled birds." They 
do not think as the majority of men think on 
any subject. There is a warp and twist about 
their mental processes — how produced or 
when, I cannot say — that is peculiar to their 
class. They are always splitting Churches 
on some fine-drawn or queer thread of spec- 
ulation. There is an everlasting defining 
and dividing going on among them. They 
resemble a plate of mica — the tiling is very 
thin and slight at first, but, to your sur- 
prise, it is capable of division laterally; and 
as you go on experimenting on its laminated 
structure, you have at last an immense num- 
ber of broad, elastic, and exceedingly thin 
scales; and if your sight were keener and 
your instruments of division sharper and 
more delicate, there is no telling whether or 
not you ever would stop splitting. . 

Ah me! The Lord help us! My travel- 
ing companion had a head that stuck out 
behind just under the brim of his hat, with 
5' 



66 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



a sharply marked protrusion. I believe it is 
there the phrenologists locate self-conceit, 
and perhaps combativeness. May be phre- 
nology is half right. Those are the elements 
of your disputatious champion, full of his 
dogma, and armed cap-a-pie for an encounter 
with the rest of mankind. 

I once traveled a circuit in Virginia in 
which some of the greatest early conquests 
of Dr. John Thomas were made. While 
there I heard what I am about to relate. I 
subsequently became well acquainted with 
the very eccentric opponent of Thomas, and 
learned from him the literal truth of the story. 
It may not be new to the readers of the Ad- 
vocate, but it is too good to die. The gem of 
anecdote will bear resetting. 

When the Thomasites became numerous 
and aggressive, the Presbyterian minister, 
then settled over a neighboring church — Mr. 
Watt — who was a man of learning and acute 
mind, and who had the most singular voice 
I ever heard — high in pitch, fine, and rather 
whining in tone, and with a little odd turn 
to it every now and then, which was at once 
inimitable and unimaginable — thought it his 



The Thomasites. 



67 



duty to " drive away erroneous and strange 
doctrine" like this from the borders of his 
congregation, and so preached a strong ser- 
mon against it on Galatians i. 8. This pro- 
voked a challenge for a debate (these people 
live on disputation) with Dr. Thomas himself, 
which was promptly accepted. The day came, 
an immense crowd was assembled, a moder- 
ator appointed, and the debate began. Mr. 
Watt soon perceived that his antagonist did 
not have the knowledge of Hebrew with 
which he was usually accredited, and which he 
made a great show of possessing ; and so, after 
challenging him to read a passage out of the 
Hebrew Bible at random (which was cau- 
tiously declined), felt the more confidence in 
attacking his criticisms of the original words 
translated "soul" in the Old Testament. 
Thomas had asserted that so far from mean- 
ing a spiritual, immaterial, immortal princi- 
ple, these words often meant " air," " breath," 
" perfume l} even; and making the blunder 
of connecting with the word in dispute an- 
other word, "bottles" (e. g., "bottles" of 
perfume), he averred with some flourish in 
marking the absurdity of the common view, 



OS Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



that the word so patly rendered "soul" even 
meant 64 a smelling-bottle!''* 

When Watt came to reply, he first serious- 
ly refuted the false criticism, and showed its 
source in the ignorance of the pretentious re- 
former; and carrying the war into Africa, he 
gave examples of what would follow from 
such interpretation. Opening at the forty- 
second Psalm he read, with that remarkable 
and unique voice at its highest pitch, and 
with its queerest turn. "Why art thou cast 
down. my smelling-bottle! and why art 
thou disquieted within me?" The effect was 
instantaneous and overwhelming. Thomas 
sprung to his feet and said, " You are beat- 
ing the air. sir!" ,; Xo,'' retorted Watt, i4 I 
am beating Dr. John Thomas, and beating 
him well ! " 

It may be safely said that Thomasism never 
recovered from that blow. The young men 
of the county, full of fun, rang the changes 
on Watt's citation from Psalms. Careless 
about the fact that the antagonists were dis- 
cussing Hebrew, not Greek, and thinking 
only how absurd the thing could be made 
when applied to any part of the Bible, they 



The Thomasites. 



69 



took up the New Testament, and read, 
"What shall it profit a man if he gain the 
whole world and lose his own smelling-bot- 
tle?" and read and laughed, and laughed 
and read, for many a day. 

There still linger in those regions a few 
Thomasite families, but they are hopelessly 
dwindling. No resurrection or revival awaits 
them. Like the bodies of the wicked, ac- 
cording to their theory, they are bound to 
extinction, and no baptism will give them 
eternal life. 



70 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



No. 11. 

COUNTRY CHURCH-YARDS. 

OME time since at a country church 
I noticed near by an inclosure of 
white palings around about half 
an acre of ground. On inspection it proved 
to be a grave-yard. 

The people of that vicinity had discovered 
the value of a common burial-place for their 
church community. Their dead were no 
longer to be scattered over a wide neighbor- 
hood, at neglected and forsaken private bury- 
ing-places, but were to be collected into a 
receptacle near their house of worship, al- 
ways in sight when the worshipers assembled 
at the house of God; their remains protected 
from desecration, and laid away in squares 
and lots green and fresh looking even in 
winter, and beautified with ornamental shrubs 
and flowers. I have seen some other move- 
ments of the same kind. I hail them with 
great joy, and hope to see the practice obtain 
universally. 

I hope I shall live to see a cemetery at 




Country Church-yards. 



71 



almost every Methodist church in the coun- 
try. 

Very beautiful are the grave -yards near 
the old Presbyterian and Lutheran and other 
churches in the Valley of Virginia. As I write 
I think of one near the " Blowing Cave." 
As the stage turned down the slanting road 
and the " westering" sun glistened from the 
Cow Pasture (or may be it is the Calf Pas- 
ture) River, the white grave-stones gleamed 
out of the grassy sod, and added a charm of 
sacred rest to the scenery. Unmolested, and 
yet unforgotten and guarded, the " forefa- 
thers of the hamlet" slept around the house 
of God — "the God not of the dead but of 
the living, for all live unto him." Alive 
for evermore! "absent from the body," but 
"present with the Lord," the deceased saints 
of that region looked down from heavenly 
heights upon the place where their flesh rest- 
ed in hope, and nothing in the scene could 
have offended their sanctified tastes or caused 
disgust toward their "parted friends still. in 
the vale confined," struggling in the warfare 
with the world of ungodliness. ~No such 
pleasing memory remains of many a bury- 



72 Recreations of a presiding Ehhr. 



ing-place which I have seen in my wander- 
ings. 

Occasionally as I look from the windows of 
the fast-moving train, shooting over valleys 
and through cut hills, my eyes fall on a melan- 
choly spot. The thick-growing sassafras or 
gum, the wild plum or thorn, untrained and 
untrimmed, in rank and forbidding luxuri- 
ance, marks a spot denied to agriculture; 
whether a rock-pile or a 44 snakery *' might be 
doubtful were it not that the remnants of a de- 
caying plank fence or paling, from which all 
traces of paint have vanished, proclaim that it 
is a so-called grave-yard. There is no memorial 
of the dead, no dates or names. Close search 
might reveal some rough head and foot- 
stones, taken from the field hard by and 44 set 
up" when the graves were filled. The space 
between them hints as to the age (by the 
height) of the dead. These short graves hold 
44 somebody's darlings." That long one yon- 
der may be a patriarch of the group, or a 
tall youth fallen in the prime of his hopeful 
life. But the place has been sold away from 
its original owners; scarcely anybody around 
could tell about them, and soon nobody will 



Country Church-yards. 



know or care; and the besom of decay and 
neglect will sweep away all traces of a u re- 
served 99 burying-place. 

In her childhood and youth my mother, 
who was an orphan, had a very dear friend 
who was a mother to her. That lady, of 
good family, of fair possessions, of a wide 
connection, was buried in an old family bury- 
ing-place, on the land of my brother-in-law, 
" reserved" in all the deeds of conveyance. 
My mother, when on her death-bed, desired 
that her body might be laid near the grave 
of her faithful and revered friend. She would 
sleep also in a few hundred yards of the cham- 
ber of her only daughter. We complied with 
her wish asfaras possible; butthoughlessthan 
forty years had elapsed, nobody could point 
out the grave of that noble woman. Her son, 
a venerable and infirm man, was still alive, at 
the distance of five or six miles, but had not 
been to the neighboring village for a long 
while. Possibly he could have guessed where 
it was. Possibly my mother in her life had 
ventured a guess of the same kind while 
walking under the honey-locusts and per- 
simmons. That old man is gone, all his 



74 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



generation are probably gone; which of the 
obscure and fast-sinking stones once set up at 
the head and foot mark her resting-place 
there is probably none upon earth that can 
tell. The uninclosed common — beaten by 
feet of sheep and ox, unlike the surrounding 
pasture only in that it has some trees and 
sunken spaces, with singular obstructive 
stones here and there — hides the dust of a 
noble lady of refinement, comparative wealth, 
character, and a wide circle of kindred of 
great respectabilit\M The resurrectionist's 
spade or the archangel's trump will be re- 
quired to identify her grave! The graves of 
the grandfather and grandmother of a dis- 
tinguished American general are in a little 
corner of outlying field between two roads 
just beyond Farmville. The English gentle- 
man now owning the farm made an offer 
concerning the rescue of that place from ob- 
literation, which he informed me was not 
responded to. His plow runs up to the tan- 
gled wild of plum-bushes, rock-piles, and run- 
ning briers — annually contracting — which 
distinguishes the resting-place of the old 
people. In a few years, I think, their bones 



Country Church-yards. 75 



will sleep under the tilled glebe, forgotten 
and forsaken till Christ comes. Somewhere 
along the course of the old road from Suffolk 
to Portsmouth lie the bones of Robert Will - 
iams, the first Methodist preacher that ever 
spoke the words of eternal life in Virginia. 
It is barely possible (though improbable) that 
he was buried in the old church-yard at 
Benn's, but otherwise the conjecture of Dr. 
Bennett is probably correct — that the plow- 
boy whistles his jocund air, as all unconscious 
he drives his share over the dust of the holy 
and great pioneer of Methodism! 

Let us make these calamitous accidents 
impossible hereafter by making and main- 
taining at all our country churches a "God's 
acre," beautiful and well inclosed — if possi- 
ble, with brick or stone. Let it be laid out 
in seemly and attractive style. Let the 
women, those ministers of grace and beauty 
in every community, see that it is planted 
with evergreens and adorned with flowering 
shrubs and plants. Grant each family a plat. 
There let each church-community bury its 
dead; not as the criminal and suicide — "at 
the forks of a road, with a stake in his 



76 Recreations of a Presiding Elder 



heart" — but so that the lost may be "had 
in remembrance/' and their last resting- 
place be hallowed above common ground 
forever more. 



The Quarter Stretch. 



77 




. No. 12. 
THE QUARTER STRETCH. 

ft HEN I was a boy my father lived 
in a country village. Near it, in a 
certain year, there was established 
a race-course. The "sporting" propensities 
of the community at length reached that 
height. There had been gamblers in it " of 
old time;" there were some connoisseurs in 
horse-flesh. The racing mania was then at 
its height in the United States. "Boston" 
was about retiring on his glory as an un- 
equaled Virginia steed. With the cultiva- 
tion of some local celebrities in the way of 
fast animals and the preparation of the course 
for the regular "races," there was much ex- 
citement among the juniors of every family. 
My father did not allow us to attend races; 
but in our excursions to the woods and fish- 
ing, and the like, we took the race-track in 
the way coming back, and walked around 
the stables, saw T the celebrated animals, and 
looked at the wonderful circle itself, with its 
judges' stand, etc. And on race-days some 



78 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



of us mounted to the top of the house, and, 
little affected by the splendid mountain scen- 
ery that stretched off, under a glorious sky, 
before our eyes, bent our gaze, with true fall- 
en proclivities, upon the- earth and its distant 
race-course. There we had occasional glimps- 
es of the hotly-contested field, as a group of 
flying horses, with trim mountings, and jock- 
eys bent forward over their necks, flashed 
across the line of our strained vision. Now 
and then they were "neck to neck." Re- 
port said, in many a case, breathlessly told, 
that " a blanket could have been laid on both 
as they ran." From our house-top aerie one 
very important part of the track came into 
view. They called it the "quarter stretch." 
It was the last fourth of a mile before the 
judges' stand was reached. Victory hung 
upon that "stretch." Often it was snatched 
from a favorite animal in that quarter of a 
mile. If, when the foremost horse passed 
the stand, any unfortunate animal was be- 
hind a certain point in that stretch, they said 
he was "distanced," and he could run no 
more in any "heat " of that race. (I remem- 
ber the intense astonishment, mortification, 



The Quarter Stretch. 



79 



and disgust we boys felt when it was an- 
nounced that "Hard Cider"— a village nag 
of great popularity with us, as we viewed 
(laity his sleek black coat and arching neck 
"clothed with thunder" — had been actually 
"distanced" in his first race! That was also 
his last. He was a doomed animal from that 
time. He was condemned to ignominious 
pulling in a wagon team.) 

As I have been proceeding on this fourth 
round of quarterly-meetings, that old race- 
course has occurred to me, and furnished an 
image of things ecclesiastical. We are on 
the " quarter stretch ! " The last two furlongs 
of our ecclesiastical-year track are, in part, 
past already. Swift feet hurry along the fa- 
tal "stretch." Spiritually, financially, cler- 
ically, we are putting forth all our powers 
for victory or defeat. By the 15th of No- 
vember every preacher, every church, every 
circuit, and every station will have passed 
the judges' stand triumphant or " second 
best," or, it may be, will have hauled up 
" distanced," disgraced, and, leaping the side- 
rail in disgust, have made off for the stable 
of some subterfuge or poor excuse. What 



80 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



whipping and spurring of stewards to " bring 
up"" deficiencies in payments; what plung- 
ing and kicking and rearing of obstinate, 
stingy, and unfaithful members under the 
lively persuadings of the officials; what rac- 
ing and reaching after lost opportunities and 
fleeing hopes of preachers and workers of all 
sorts; what panting and blowing and heav- 
ing of overworked people of every class, aim- 
ing to do the work of six months in one, 
does this old "quarter stretch" witness! It 
has seen the like, perhaps worse, for many a 
year. 

On one side the sight is suggestive of good. 
It is well for faithful men, even at the last 
time, and with a slim chance of success, to 
attempt the retrieving of a state of affairs 
which has been brought about by the unbe- 
lief and neglects and sins of others. It is a 
noble thing in that noble band of men that 
never bowed the knee to any Baal of world- 
liness or idolatry, when they resolve, if pos- 
sible, to save a battle about to be lost by the 
treachery of a membership which cannot be 
depended upon. The}' will have one more 
protracted - meeting; they will make one 



The Quarter Stretch. 



81 



more effort to "begin a Sunday-school; they 
will make sacrifices to see the preacher paid 
in full, and not suffer the collections to fall 
behind; they will stir up their hearts once 
more to infuse into the body ecclesiastic some 
life and vigor and ardor in Christ's cause. 
Faithful souls, may God's blessing abide 
with you! If all the members of the Church 
were like you, the country would, spiritual- 
ly speaking, " blossom as the rose/' And 
you have your reward. Sometimes it is of 
success. The inert and faithless cannot with- 
stand your fervid piety. They are aroused, 
and do wonderfully better than w r as expect- 
ed; and at the last moment, when failure 
seems imminent, there is poured out a bless- 
ing which there is not room to contain. Or 
if failure in some degree comes anyhow, its 
force is in a measure broken; there is a 
foundation for future steps of recovery; 
there is a seed of hope and cheerfulness left; 
and the answer of a good conscience, in your 
cases, sweetens the bitterness of default. 

But other reflections are awakened as we 
look at the " quarter stretch" struggle, espe- 
cially at its financial side. Why should this 
6 



82 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



annual effort be necessary? Why will men 
deliberately put off what they know must be 
done, and that erelong, or else failure will en- 
sue? I venture a few guesses at the c *why:" 
1. Some do not believe there is disgrace 
in failure. It does not hurt them for the 
preacher to be deficient upon his small sala- 
ry. He can stand it; has been standing it a 
long time. He and his family know how to 
pinch. He has done faithful work; if not 
perfect in its excellence, it is very good for 
the price. He has gone, in wet and dry 
weather, preaching, visiting, and administer- 
ing discipline. His allowance is very neces- 
sary for his support, but he can manage to 
pay one-sixth of it himself. True, the rich- 
est man on the circuit has never been guilty 
of half such liberality in support of the gos- 
pel, but he is not a preacher, and is supposed, 
to be unequal to such a stretch of grace. 
And it is no mortification to have Dalefield 
Circuit read out at Conference as giving four 
dollars to Foreign Missions and one dollar 
and a half to Domestic Missions, and one- 
third of the assessment for Conference Col- 
lection and Educational and Bishops' funds. 



The Quarter Stretch. 



83 



One of the stewards has already asked the 
presiding elder if he does not think they 
could get about one or two hundred dollars 
appropriation from the Domestic Mission 
Board. They do not mind being pilloried 
in the 64 Minutes." The truth is, thev do not 
often see the 44 Minutes." The preacher had 
a hard time selling his nine copies this year. 
So they have taken eleven months and twen- 
ty days to find out what they could do, and 
have not maintained, in actual execution, 
the standard of their conjecture made at that 
late day. It will make very little difference 
whether they do or not, especially a hundred 
years from this time. 

2. Some lack system, and do not act with 
any method. If they would be precise, and 
ascertain regularly what they can do, and 
begin to do it early in the year, they would 
accomplish more, vastly more, and do it with 
much greater ease. The race would be won 
before the 44 quarter stretch'' w^as reached, 
and they would simply have to draw rein 
and gallop victoriously, at an easy pace, oyer 
that famous ground. I am satisfied that this 
is the evil factor in a multitude of cases. 



84 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



Acting on principle, and acting systematic- 
ally, would cure many evils in spiritual and 
financial matters. Especially would it cure 
this straining and gasping in the attempt to 
meet expenses. If every man would u lay 
by him in store v as God has prospered him 
every week, or determine by some other plan 
how much exactly he can venture to give, 
and give it steadily and statedly, there would 
be no need for such breathless exertions to 
raise comparatively small amounts. In some 
cases the preacher cultivates system in his 
membership with respect to the " collec- 
tions," while the stewards practice irregular- 
ity among themselves, and confirm the peo- 
ple in their lack of method with respect to 
the preacher's salary; and so, at the u quarter 
stretch" he has his collections in hand, and 
they leave such a faithful man of God not , 
only in danger of loss, but often actually de- 
ficient, by their accumulated arrears. Spur- 
ring and whipping over the " stretch" will not 
save the race. And sometimes such a preach- 
er is told, for his consolation, that if he had 
not raised money for missions, etc., he would 
have got his own pay! 



The Quarter Stretch. 



85 



3. There is a great deal of dead wood in 
our membership. I think as a body we have 
less attachment to our Church than any oth- 
er people. There is less Church pride among 
us. We do not feel stung as others do when 
comparisons are made to our disadvantage. 
We have managed somehow to get into our 
membership many people who have little or 
no religion, no zeal, no sense of personal re- 
sponsibility to God and the Church, little in- 
telligence, less information about religious 
matters; who lie still to be acted upon, 
preached at, scolded, stirred up ; an inert, 
lethargic mass, "at ease in Zion." I believe 
we would be better if the whole of such mem- 
bership were cut off. But, as we retain it, it 
forms a basis of calculation and expectation. 
We seem to have so many members and so 
much property and resources. But that part 
of our ecclesiastical tree is dead. It does 
not sprout a branch or put forth bud or leaf 
or flower or fruit. These are our habitual 
neglecters of worship, our chronic grumblers 
and growlers, our ecclesiastical Bedouins, 
rambling about to every new thing, the bane 
of faithful stewards and collectors, the heart- 



86 .Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



sickening of ministers and pious people. 
The delinquencies of such " sons of Belial" 
are to be anticipated, but it is not so easy to 
provide against them. A steward in tow of 
such people resembles Elliott, in " South 
Carolina Sports," convoying an immense 
load of harpooned devil-fish. After immense 
toil, paying out line, rowing and pulling 
against tide and wind, at the critical moment 
his harpoon pulls out of the disgusting mass, 
and it sinks out of sight by its own weight. 
He has " toiled all night, and caught " worse 
than " nothing." He cannot even "make a 
show openly" of his dead monster. 

But enough of this. When this sees the 
light of print we shall have run our year's 
race. In " Conference assembled " we will be 
reviewing the irrevocable past and planning 
for our new year. 

Reader, consider these things. If you 
have had any part in causing the difficulties 
of the "quarter stretch," amend forthwith. 



Unconscious Selfishness. 



87 



No. 13. 

UNCONSCIOUS SELFISHNESS, 
NE of the perplexing problems of 
practical life is the case of men, 
otherwise good, out of whose living 
there crops here and there an offensive and 
sometimes disgusting selfishness. What are 
we to think of them? How hard it is, es- 
pecially ^for generous, true-hearted, self-sac- 
rificing men to believe the piety of these men 
to be genuine! To recognize their religion 
seems like indorsing the devil's paper. Yet, 
while in their faults they "offend" every 
right-minded man to the point ofttimes of 
awakening a holy indignation, they are in 
many features unmistakably good and devout. 
If ministers of the gospel, they maybe labori- 
ous, eloquent, earnest, spiritually-minded in 
most things; if laymen, upright, honest, ami- 
able, zealous for religion and morality, un- 
spotted in domestic and social relations. To 
condemn them utterly is to adopt a standard 
which sooner or later will destroy every man's 
hopes; for who is not faulty? who is without 




88 * Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



serious blemishes? whose motives are always 
of the purest and loftiest type in every thing? 
We allow that they are pious; and sometimes 
.affecting proofs of this come out of their 
private papers or secret history. But we 
feel tempted to withdraw 7 " the admission of 
their claims to piety when we run foul of 
their weakness. It is an unlovely type of 
character. 

We once knew a man of a devout and most 
serious cast. He was a man of prayer and 
of purest living in the prominent features of 
his behavior. He was a minister, and at- 
tained great eminence as a preacher. His 
eloquence, fervor, and power were unexcelled. 
He held the soundest views of theology and 
experimental religion. Being w r ell acquainted 
with him, we mentioned in his preseuceour in- 
tention to journey in a certain direction. He, 
it seems, w T as about changing his residence, and 
with his whole family going in the same direc- 
tion. He at once expressed great pleasure 
that we were to be fellow-travelers; but he 
presently unfolded the reason. He mentioned, 
with perfect artlessness, that we could render 
him a service at starting, in a matter which 



Unconscious Selfishness. 



89 



threatened to be burdensome. Musing a 
little, he bethought himself of another place 
where we could also do him a like service. 
And renewing his expression of pleasure at 
our going, he did not say a syllable besides, nor 
afterward when toe met, indicating that he 
had ever taken another view of our going 
than that of an unexpected service to him- 
self. He was glad that we were going as a 
man when his shoes are soiled would be glad 
to meet a boot-black, with a fair chance to 
have the boot-black's services gratuitously 
rendered. It was amusing — the innocent 
simplicity of the whole thing — but it was 
also provoking. 

A commoner form of this evil is the forma- 
tion of a habit of so acting that we make the 
impression upon our fellow-men that there is 
some ulterior object of a selfish nature in every 
thing we do. People learn to think, we edu- 
cate them to think, that we never speak or act 
from the unstudied impulse of an open, can- 
did nature. They are led, whether or no, to 
look below our words and acts — the most 
trivial or ordinary — for some deeper or more 
reed meaning. 



90 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



The late Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of 
Oxford in the English Establishment, a son 
of the great William Wilberforce, seems to 
have been such a man. Of great abilities in 
every respect, especially sfe a preacher, and 
despite his errors and defects, a man of a de- 
vout and truly penitent and believing frame 
of mind, he succeeded in setting even such a 
man as Prince Albert thoroughly against 
him. That nobleman — worthy nephew of 
King Leopold, worthy consort of such a 
Queen as Victoria — had, in the course of fif- 
teen years' acquaintance with Wilberforce, 
come to this judgment, expressed to the Earl 
of Aberdeen : " He does every thing for some 
object. He has a motive for all his conduct." 
And by this he meant to express "a suspi- 
cion " as to the Bishop's " sincerity and disin- 
terestedness." 

Bishop Wilberforce is unfortunately not 
alone in this respect. A number of illus- 
trations come to our remembrance of just 
such men. After sufficient acquaintance (al- 
though our first impressions may have been 
like Prince Albert's of Samuel Wilberforce, 
at his speech in Exeter Hall, June 1, 1841), 



Unconscious Selfishness. 



91 



we become satisfied that these people " do 
every thing for some object." We sometimes 
see plainly what that object is; but when we 
do not, we are none the less satisfied that 
something ulterior is lurking in the private 
counsels of our plausible and polite, and per- 
haps highly-accomplished, brother. In the 
political phraseology of the day, he is "mak- 
ing a slate;" and in that " slate" we may be 
sure that his own interest occupies a central 
position. Such men appear to be incapable 
of understanding the apostolic direction, " In 
honor preferring one another." They are 
always thinking, behind all their speeches 
and acts that do not appear to mean this, of 
how to take care of themselves to the best 
advantage. The indulgence and. cultivation 
of this spirit prepare the way for the occa- 
sional lapses into more open and downright 
selfishness by which some end is gained. 
Then the sin is more palpable, and probably 
ceases to be what we have termed " uncon- 
scious." 

Much of this unworthy spirit is, beyond 
all doubt, not understood in its true nature 
by the man who is possessed by it. Like 



92 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



men under the dominion of covetousness and 
egotism, the victim has given his blemish a 
flattering name, and thinks of it under the 
glamour of that deceptive title. We have 
known men exacting sacrifices of everybody 
in their families and making none themselves, 
who imagined that they were patterns of 
domestic loveliness. AVe have seen exacting, 
fretful women whom nothing could please, 
who supposed themselves to be the most 
amiable companions in the world. "We have 
known preachers always maneuvering for 
soft places, hinting for favors, taking " short 
cuts " upon a competing brother, and not 
objecting to a little self-advertising, who have 
reviewed the whole process in a " little Jack 
Horner" spirit, and wound up the transac- 
tion with Jack's reflection: "What a nice 
boy am I!" Could these people, and all 
others who belong to this line of business, 
see themselves faithfully reflected in one of 
the mirrors that may exist, for all we know, 
in another world but do not in this, they 
would be equally annoyed and confounded. 

The reader will "suffer a word of exhor- 
tation." Try to be externally exactly what 



Unconscious Selfishness. 



93 



you design to be internally. The evil spirit 
will tempt you to lay on a gloss of some sort. 
You must be polite, obliging, politic, suave, 
if you would do good ; and in order to this, 
concealment of some kind is necessary. Men 
cannot afford to show their thoughts to every- 
body. All of which, rightly understood, is 
sound doctrine; but it is easily perverted. 
The best way is not to need concealment. 
Do not be excessively cordial in manner when 
cool in heart; you will end by being a knave 
in your selfish hypocrisy, feigning what you 
never feel. If naturally reserved or distant, 
try to get rid of that defect, but not by as- 
suming w T hat you do not feel. One of the 
very meanest manifestations of a petty self- 
ishness is an assumption of universal and ever- 
present cordiality for the purpose of winning the 
good-will of our fellow-men. Do not gush, 
when the stream of disinterested love in your 
bosom is, as you know, a very tiny streamlet. 
Wait for a natural "freshet" before you open 
the flood-gates. Deeply study and try to 
practice Philippians ii. 4. There are "things 
of others." Yes, really, there is somebody 
else in the world besides yourself; and other 



94 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



people have " things" in the way of inter- 
ests, wants, desires, affections, goods. Try 
to realize it. Cultivate a going out toward 
them, not a sucking in toward yourself all 
the time; go out of your way to be accom- 
modating and obliging; suffer occasionally 
for another's sake; do not exact all you are 
entitled to; sit in the shade of obscurity 
sometimes, of choice, as a matter of personal 
discipline. A thoroughly unselfish good man 
is only " a little lower than the angels." 
Climb toward that height. 



Doers of the Word. 



95 



No. 14. 

DOERS OF THE WORD. 
"nTERING a church of a sister de- 
nomination a short time since, we 
saw over the recess behind the pul- 
pit the language of James i. 22. Impress- 
ive sermon! We heard the preacher on the 
wall — Doers, and not hearers only ! Yes, that 
is it. The grand old apostle's figure is not 
bad — of the transient look in the glass, with 
its 44 straightway " forgetting "what man- 
ner of man " it was the mirror reflected. 
That is what is the matter with great num- 
bers of the hearers who throng our churches 
every w T eek — they hear, and that is the end 
of it; hear and forget, hear and never prac- 
tice, hear and remain unchanged; thoughts 
the same, words the same, habits the same, 
life-principles the same, the view of things 
unaltered for the temporary intrusion on 
Sundays of a very different picture. 

How much good doctrine comes forth from 
our Methodist pulpits, in our cities only, every 
Sunday ! How much from the country pul- 




96 Recreations of a Presiding Elder, 



pits on every side ! What if all were done, 
as well as listened to — what rare Christians 
we should have, what growing, improving, 
active, faithful men and women ! And why 
not? Do we not go thither to hear, that we 
may do? Do we plan in advance onl}^ to 
hear? Do we deny the obligation to prac- 
tice even more than to hear? 

What a shrinking up at once it would 
cause of the army of captious and unreason- 
able critics ! Other business — urgent busi- 
ness — for them! Doing the word; ah, that 
would fill heart and hands! Xo time for 
cool and merciless objections to this man's 
style and that man's manner, to this preach- 
er's education and that preacher's mode of 
preparation. Let him take care of himself. 
" To his own Master he stancleth or falleth." 
Enough for us, and more than enough, to be 
taking care of ourselves! What a stock al- 
ready laid up of duty known but not per- 
formed, of truth enforced upon us but never 
illustrated in our lives, of errors to be cor- 
rected, of bad habits to be renounced, of 
good deeds to be clone ere " the night Com- 
eth " — the night "when no man can work." 



Doers of the Word. 



97 



What a stirring in the army of drones ! 
What a buzzing of wings and putting forth 
of feet and arms ! What another shaking in 
" the valley of dry bones ! " No more sleep, 
no more dullness — inattentive, phlegmatic ! 
So much to be done presents itself, that there 
is no space for these by-gone amusements or 
torpors. Up, and be doing, thou sluggard ! 
Spiritual paralysis has well-nigh smitten you. 
When was it that you ever did any thing? 
You hear — in your sort — every Sunday, but 
on what day do you practice what you hear? 
What can the preacher count upon you for? 

It so happened when we last sat in this 
same church for a short time, it was at a 
marriage. We do not remember so much 
about noticing that inscription on the wall 
then. But this last time it was at & funeral. 
In connection with all the solemn surround- 
ings, the habiliments of mourning, the cof- 
fin — flower-covered, but a coffin still; the 
solemn hymns and prayers; how soul-pierc- 
ing those words on the wall ! They needed 
not "a man's hand over against the candle- 
stick" to be writing them. 

How differently we hear or read at differ- 
7 



98 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



ent times ! In eternity we will do some mo- 
mentous remembering. Let us turn over a 
new leaf in this matter of hearing. "Xot 
hearers only''' — no, Gocl forbid! — but "doers 
of the word.*' 



The Tunnel of Death. 



99 




No. 15. 
THE TUNNEL OF DEATH. 

TUNNEL with light at both ends." 
So a friend of ours in momentary 
expectation of departure out of 
this life, called death. The physician in at- 
tendance — a non-professor, as so many of his 
calling are, but should not be — wrung his 
hands, and with a look of the deepest con- 
cern, said he " would give worlds for such a 
faith ! ;? 

The saying is true. Death to Christians, 
as to other men, is untried. All within the 
entrance is dark, gloomy, and forbidding. 
The trains which pass in with human pas- 
sengers have never returned. Neither voice 
nor signal comes through the Plutonian 
darkness. In that respect, 

Love may haunt the grave of love, 
And watch the mold in vain. 

All is lighted on this side. Busy, excited, 
interested spectators pass and repass in the 
full blaze of day. Is there also light at the 



100 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



other end? Do the passengers sit only a short 
time in the darkness and listen to the rum- 
bling wheels on which they make transition 
from one world to the other ? Do they pres- 
ently break out into light and beauty on that 
other side ? 

So the Christian firmly believes. As he be- 
lieves on Jesus Christ, he believes on him as 
a risen and exalted Lord. " He lives who 
once was dead." That Saviour "entered 
the grave in mortal flesh; " he went through 
the tunnel. He alone — save the few whom he 
raised from the dead more than eighteen 
hundred years ago — has come back through it. 
He reports the light on the other side, and we 
" have believed his report." As thoroughly 
as we " receive the witness of men " about 
tunnels we have never gone through, we re- 
ceive the witness of God, the Son, which is 
" greater," more reliable than that testimony 
of men. And in this we have an immense 
advantage over men who tremble and doubt 
and fear. By this faith death is deprived of 
its sting, the grave of its victory. We fear 
not to die; we yield up our spirits at our 
Lord's command, expecting to " see light in 



The Tunnel of Death, 



101 



his light," at the other end of the tunnel of 
death. There we " shall see him as he is," 
and with him see 

Those angel faces smile 
Which we have loved and lost the while. 

"For we know that if our earthly house 
of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have 
a building of God, a house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens." Such knowl- 
edge is invaluable in its power to sustain and 
cheer. It silences all the tormenting ques- 
tionings which otherwise, with their ceaseless 
din, distract our souls in every moment of re- 
flection. 

"What after death for me remains?" 
Who that rejects Christianity can answer 
such a question satisfactorily ? Peering into 
the abyss of darkness into which sweeps 
down the endless procession of mortal men, 
their works and their hopes, what light can 
he pretend to see glimmering ever so faintly 
out of the dread shade? If self-deceived, 
the Christian is happy in his delusion. He 
will be as well off' in any event, certainly no 
worse in any respect, for the delusive conso- 
lations which cannot — says the unbeliever — 



102 Becrealions of a Presiding Elder. 



be realized beyond the grave. Whatever the 
truth (and of this we have on our side all 
that men have longed, prayed, and hoped 
for), it is better to believe that we are going 
through a tunnel bounded at each end by 
life and light than sinking into a bottomless 
horror of erloomy night and endless black- 
ness. 



Starting the Machine. 



103 



No. 16. 

STARTING THE MACHINE. 

HE machine I am going to write 
about starting is not my pen. That 
has not been idle, though in this 
present name and form it has been in a state 
of suspended animation for more than a year. 
E came in on the " quarter stretch " of 1881- 
82, and have been dormant in the line of 
recreations ever since. 

That machine is the presiding eldership in 
activity. Duly set up in its place by episco- 
pal authority, oiled and lubricated by the 
unction of ecclesiastical commendation, with 
the engineer standing in his place, will the 
thing move? And when it begins its motion, 
will its energy expend itself in empty and 
useless revolutions on an axis, like the wheels 
of a locomotive spinning around on a greased 
spot in a steep grade? or will it pull a re- 
spectable load along, and thunder through 
the forests by day and light up the darkness 
of night with its moving fires, and scare up 
the echoes with its loud blasts? Is it £oin£ 




104 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



to go. and to some purpose, or not ? that 's 
the question. 

The district stewards' meeting will be here 
in a few days to provide a stated supply of 
fuel. 

I have no fellow-feeling with the objurga- 
tions which some rash men among our clergy 
have poured upon the heads of these breth- 
ren. True, some of them may have shown 
a parsimonious proclivity to cutting down 
salaries; some may have esteemed it "the 
whole duty of man" (in their estate) to lay 
all burdens on others, and diminish them as 
much as possible on their own appointments; 
some may have meted out to the stranger 
what they would have thought too little for 
a favorite and well-known elder ; but that is 
simply to say they are mortal, and we may 
look for infirmities among them as these are 
found in the incumbents of the eldership. 

The thing most difficult for them to get rid 
of — which is an evil — is a lack of sympathy 
with the officer for whose support they pro- 
vide. He is a chief shepherd nominally, but 
in fact he is nobody s j xts ^ or ^ an d the man 
who goes for a broad and liberal policy with 



Starting the Machine, 



105 



respect to his preacher's support is not so 
certain to feel the same principle at work in 
his breast when the presiding elder is con- 
cerned. The result is that the salaries of 
presiding elders have not been so large as 
the amounts allowed the same man or men 
of equivalent talent when serving as pastors. 
A man of tolerable ability in a station has a 
furnished house and from $1,500 to §2,000 
salary; while the majority of presiding eld- 
ers (and some of them have been men of 
mark) receive $1,400 to $1,800, and provide 
their own houses and pay their traveling ex- 
penses over a large district, amounting some- 
times to nearly $100 per annum. 

The tendency to such lack of sympathy, 
though in actual practice it may not always 
prove to be so, is greatest in those charges 
where the pastor gives the highest satisfac- 
tion. In such cases the steward is apt to be 
the reflection of a sentiment more or less 
widely diffused among the people of the 
charge, that nothing we can do is too good 
for our pastor, and we ought to do as little as 
possible for any " outside character," such as 
a presiding elder or a bishop, with whom our 



106 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



relation is indirect and has none of the close- 
ness and tenderness belonging to that which 
exists between us and our preacher. 

But whether these things be so or not, the 
stewards will meet, and when the " first 
round" is duly published, the " tread-mill" 
— as Dr. Bennett used to call his editorial 
work — will feel the weekly touch, and more 
or less the daily pressure of the presiding eld- 
er's feet, and motion will commence. A 
year's work will have begun; at least what 
is "cut out" for a year. We cannot yet 
know whose feet will this year pause upon 
the road of life, and whose staggering steps 
will turn toward the rest where Spiller and 
Michaels lie in calm repose. It may be one 
of us who command the main divisions of 
the working force will fall. God help us to 
start aright — with holy motives, with a con- 
secrated spirit, with earnest and brave pur- 
pose ! If we do not save souls, edify believ- 
ers and turn sinners to repentance, lead men 
to holy living and stir up the Church to 
greater usefulness and more extensive good 
works of all kinds, our labor will be in vain. 

Sometimes a feeling of faintness comes 



Starting the Machine. 107 



over me as I look forward to the demands 
and needs of the district in spiritual things. 
u Who is sufficient for these things?" What 
an array of darkness, ignorance, unbelief, 
backsliding in heart, formalism, pride, selfish- 
ness, corruption, have my brethren and I to 
meet and contend with! But "the sword of 
the Lord and of Gideon" is drawn on our 
side. We gained somewhat last year. We 
will stand fast on our vantage-ground, and 
plan to do valiant things through our Lord 
and by the power of his might. There is a 
great deal in beginning promptly and well. 
The most popular preacher will mar his ac- 
ceptabilit} 7 and success by dilatory movements, 
being always behind, how r ever little. Let us 
be "on time," and give the great enemy no 
start of us. 



108 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



No. 17. 

THE ITINERANT'S SACRIFICE. 
[IE preachers newly appointed to my 
district are just getting into place. 
Some have come a long distance. 
All of them have been at more or less trouble 
in removing, not to say any thing of expense 
(which may or may not be repaid). Loss 
which cannot be made good is always caused 
by removal. This worry and damage they 
usually bear with reasonable cheerfulness. 
If now and then they fret a little or inward- 
ly chafe, it is not to be wondered at; for 
then, perhaps., they are most keenly remind- 
ed of what is the sacrifice of the itinerancy. 
Then they feel — and with it the iron enters 
their soul — that they have not, and never 
can have, a home. Very comfortable sojourn - 
ing-places they have in many instances; but 
no spot to call their own, to adorn, to make 
sweet with little things which, small in them- 
selves, shall have delightful associations, to 
leave behind to the wife and children that 
survive. The few very fortunate ones may 




The Itinerant's Sacrifice. 



109 



comfort their hearts — if that will comfort — 
with the thought that, when they are dis- 
abled or dead, enough is laid up with which 
to buy a home and settle the household. To 
the family it is a rather sorrowful view that 
home begins where joy ends, that settlement 
is possible when a last breaking up has oc- 
curred. And the greater part have no such 
consolation. With a heart strengthened by 
faith in the Divine Providence, with an eye 
cleared from the natural dimness of tears by 
habitual looking at unseen things, they calm- 
ly gaze along the empty line of vision, which 
is unbroken by any " cottage in this wilder- 
ness" this side of or beyond the spot where 
in anticipation they see the mound of grass 
or red mold that marks the end of their ca- 
reer. This is the sacrifice of itinerants. 

To preach for a small salary, to live under 
disadvantages for the education of children, 
to change residence often, and sometimes 
from a healthy to an unhealthy climate, 
to be dependent upon unappreciative and 
at times disagreeable people for a living 
— these are trials and things to be borne, 
when borne at all, for Christ's sake; but 



110 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



all of them have some mitigation. This oth- 
er has none. 

The poorest laborer may rent his house, 
and, while health and industry last, may 
keep possession of the spot he has learned to 
love as home. By economy and the aid of 
building associations the poorest man may 
gradually found for himself a refuge that 
shall have as much permanence as the insta- 
bility of human affairs will allow. I have 
seen here and there, in city and country, 
those sweet little domestic nests in various 
stages of progress — some lovely with the ac- 
cumulations of years and the ingenuity of 
loving hearts; some showing signs of the 
rawness of a new enterprise, a recent if hope- 
ful beginning. 

For the bulk of our preachers no such 
prospect discloses itself, even to a fertile im- 
agination. And to be homeless; to know that 
never during life will there be a permanent 
spot, however humble, around which may 
cluster home affections, and on which may 
be lavished the outlay of hand and heart; 
and that after death the loved ones who sur- 
vive us will have no place to take shelter in 



The Itinerant's Sacrifice. 



Ill 



from the clouds of bereavement and the 
storms of adversity — this is hard to hear. To 
enter upon such a life is to make, humanly 
speaking, a great sacrifice. 

No wonder, one may think, that it had its 
conception hi the brain of a man to whom 
flight from his wife was a relief (being sepa- 
ration from a woman who "rendered twenty 
years of his life as uncomfortable as a life 
spent in continual locomotion could be"), 
and w T as especially cherished and maintained 
by a race of bachelors and widowers like As- 
bury. 

Nevertheless, the early itinerants w T ere 
heroes, and the system itself has points of 
power and value and capabilities w r hich have 
wrought wonders and given it a durability 
and vitality which so far mock the prophe- 
cies of decay made by Isaac Taylor and oth- 
ers like him. 

Let us of this later generation, who see 
and feel its weak point, ponder what reme- 
dy may be discovered to heal that deadly 
hurt. Several things occur to me as desir- 
able in that view: 

1. The erection forthwith of comfortable 



112 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



parsonages in every charge. We already 
have many. This includes pleasant and suf- 
ficient furnishing. Thereby, when these are 
everywhere, the passing from one to another 
will be like having a warm and cordial wel- 
come to the Church's own house on earth, 
which is big enough to hold all its " servants 
for Jesus' sake."' And do not forget the pre- 
siding elders. Three out of ten districts have 
parsonages, and all these were built and in 
large measure paid for by the energy and 
unceasing toil of the elders. As far as the 
Church at large is concerned, it would seem 
as if on their motion and by their planning 
the other seven will never be built. But not 
the less should they be. The Church is at 
fault, and that grievously, not to build them. 

2. The building and endowment liberally 
of a Preachers' Home, where disabled men 
and the families of the deceased who need 
shelter may find it. My heart has ached 
this year for men who are compelled to su- 
perannuate, and more for men who ought to 
retire but feel that they cannot, that it means 
the almshouse or a kindred fate. We have 
rich men who could turn this anguish into 



The Itinerant's Sacrifice. 113 



resignation. If they would, they could buy 
some sweet, retired spot, and put it in order 
for the reception of the worn-out man of God 
and his wife, or his widow and the most de- 
pendent of her children. The utter desola- 
tion of being cast off or forgotten, or of eat- 
ing the bread of bitter dependence, would be 
averted. 

When will the thought of doing this arise 
in some mind capable of executing it? Are 
the poor to do all the desiring and yearning 
after charitable works, and the rich forever 
hold and use the money without one move- 
ment of soul toward these good things? 
Then, how fearful the curse of such riches ! 
how deep the damnation of such misused 
power for good! "Charge them that are 
rich in this world that . . . they be rich 
in good w T orks." Some count their wealth 
by thousands. For what good works would 
an enemy of benevolence "stone " them? A 
few insignificant gifts that bear no propor- 
tion at all to the income they have had for 
years is all they can exhibit to a God who 
cannot be imposed upon. 

Meanwhile the faithful itinerant goes along 
8 



/ 



114 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



to his work, year after year adding to a "rec- 
ord" that is -'on high.'' The Lord Jesus, 
when he "comes the second time without 
sin unto salvation,*' will give him a "recom- 
pense of reward." 



The Itinerant's Wife. 



115 



No. 18. 

THE ITINERANT'S WIFE. 
OULD a volume like the " Sketches'' 
of Dr. Lafferty be prepared, of 
which the sketches and likenesses 
should be of the wives of our preachers, and 
not of the preachers themselves, it would be 
a more interesting volume, if not a more 
salable one, than that remarkable produc- 
tion. It is not their lot or calling to " preach 
the word ;" as a general rule, preaching wom- 
en have not been a success or a blessing 
among us. Of praying women we have had 
many, and wives of preachers among them, 
whose life-long piety has left a savor as of 
" ointment poured forth." But there have 
been many, neither preaching nor praying in 
public, who have done the less conspicuous 
but not less necessary work of " holding up 
the hands " of the Moseses with whom they 
had united their lives. These have consti- 
tuted the bulk of this class. Unostentatious 
lives, " peaceable and quiet lives in all godli- 
ness and honesty," have been theirs. Now 




116 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



and then, one departs to the better land. 
Some loving hand draws a brief portrait, and 
her memory is left with her household and a 
few intimate friends. There it will be cher- 
ished, and " oft at evening hour"' some eyes 
will moisten and some hearts ache with a 
melancholy heaviness, as something recalls 
the image of the vanished face, the touch of 
the vanished hand. What these women have 
been to their husbands none will ever know 
but those who have "loved and lost." "With 
words of cheer, born of the faith and pa- 
tience ;> that inherit the promises.'* they have 
strengthened the fainting hearts of the itin- 
erants who have been ready, like Elijah, to 
die because they were not better than their 
fathers, and saw no signs of redemption of 
the Lord's heritage. With wonderful inge- 
nuity, they have supplied the lack of service 
of an unappreciative Church, toiling night 
and day to make a small allowance support 
a large family; and. meantime, not forgetful 
of the poor, and ready for every good word 
and work. With a gracious affability, wor- 
thy of a queen, they welcome all sorts of 
visitors, and try to make all alike feel at ease 



The Itinerant's Wife. 



117 



and enjoy themselves under the friendly 
shelter of the parsonage roof. Despite a load 
of family cares, these ladies are oft from ne- 
cessity the teachers of their own little ones, 
and add the labor of giving instruction to 
the drudgery of household work. Like the 
mother of John Wesley, it is they who guide 
the infant finger to spell out " In the begin- 
ning God created the heaven and the earth/*' 
making the Bible their text-book of letters 
and religion from the very first. Ah! who 
can tell the price of such women — these pa- 
tient, believing, long-suffering, pious " yoke- 
fellows " of our itinerant oxen? Is it an evil 
or a good spirit who reminds me that all are 
not of this description ? 

I would fain throw a wide mantle of char- 
ity over the faults of husband and wife alike. 
But perhaps a slight delineation, by w T ay of 
allusion, may be as a looking-glass to show 
errors that may yet be corrected. 

Such a wife as I have depicted is not an 
extravagant woman, to run her husband into 
wasteful expenditures which embarrass him 
greatly and ultimately endanger his very sal- 
vation ; nor a lover of gossip, having a tongue 



118 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



(if not a finger) in all neighborhood scandal 
and petty quarrels; nor a eherisher of dubi- 
ous acquaintances and fellowships involving 
her husband's good name if not her own; 
nor a "swift witness 55 against all whom she 
classes, justly or unjustly, as unfriendly to 
her husband or children, ready to denounce 
m language not measured and to condemn 
with judgment not righteous; nor a woman 
of coarse tastes and rough manners, assum- 
ing to claim in her husband's name what she 
thinks he is too mealy-mouthed to demand 
for her or himself, and in that style bullying 
stewards and other church officers; nor a 
proud, haughty, high-minded (in the offen- 
sive sense of Romans xii. 16) woman, who is 
always afraid that she may associate with 
some persons or families not her equals in 
refinement, education, or intelligence, and 
who repels the diffident by her loftiness, and 
the warm-hearted by her frigid demeanor. 
Better than any of these that an itiner- 
ant's wife should be an insignificant cipher, 
counting zero in life's great calculations, a 
sweet-faced simpleton, gentle as a pet dog, 
and useless as a canary that will not sing. 



The Itinerant's Wife. 



119 



She will " break no hooks if she catch no 
fish." 

I am proud to believe, from a wide ac- 
quaintance with them, that a nobler body of 
women than the wives of our Virginia itin- 
erants would be hard to find. Not a few of 
them are rare combinations of the best qual- 
ities of mind and heart; some of them would 
adorn any sphere of life. Many are " pat- 
terns of good works;" many are, by their 
grace of manner, their charm of character, 
their tact and good taste, such aids to their 
husbands as make those better halves count 
for double, and more than double, what they 
would be alone. 

I speak not of beauty of face or figure, of 
accomplishments, of distinguished connec- 
tions. All these may be tributary to the holy 
uses of Christ's Church and minsters. Love- 
liness of person joined to loveliness of char- 
acter, true refinement and the elegance in- 
separable from genuine cultivation, sanctified 
by true piety, are powerful instrumentalities 
for doing good. God bless our preachers 
and their families! God comfort the be- 
reaved who in loneliness travel the road of 



120 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 

toil and self-denial once made bright by the 
presence of an "angel of the household!'' 
The Lord strengthen the hearts of our true 
and faithful ones, who have " left all" for 
Jesus' sake and their husbands! 



The Old North State. 



121 



No. 19. 

THE OLD NORTH STATE. 

N unexpected turn of events re- 
cently carried me out of my dis- 
trict and State, and left me for 
some days, including a Sunday, in North 
Carolina. I was once a citizen of that noble 
old State; many sweet and precious memo- 
ries cling around those j 7 ears: the vexations 
and misunderstandings of life, thank God, 
are measurably forgotten, and only a little 
sediment of disturbance marks their position 
on the chart of by-gone years. The good 
and the pleasant are more durable. They 
grapple to my heart-strings yet. Over the 
curve of the under-world into which have 
gone those distant years, when I was so much 
younger and fresher, when my children were 
little ones, and coming life seemed to offer 
many opportunities of happiness and useful- 
ness, come up to me faint but soft murmur- 
ings of pleasant recollections. The friends 
of those days people once more the halls of 
memory (many of them, alas! are passed to 




122 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



another life); I wander as of yore in the fields 
and woods; the ordinary routine is bright 
and busy, and public and extraordinary days 
are full of excitement. But it is " the clang 
of the wooden shoon," in Molloy's song. 

And here I am, in another part of the 
State, far off from those pleasant walks of 
" lang syne/ 3 And it does not look like the 
land of the holly and myrtle, the arbutus, 
the yellow jasmine, the saracenia, and pond- 
lily. The soil is red, the mud deep, and the 
hills swell and streams roll along more like 
my native Piedmont, Virginia. The air is 
softer, however, by far than that which is 
blowing from snow-touched mountains and 
along wind-shaken heights of that lovely 
region. The gardens will be some weeks 
ahead, and out-door life be much more prac- 
ticable in the spring. 

An ancient town, with its ample lots, its 
wide streets, and many elms, stretches around 
me. Gen. Jackson (Andrew, not Stonewall) 
once had a law-office here. I have seen the 
old building myself; but it was removed in 
1876 to the Philadelphia " Centennial." Not 
a great way off*, that earlier " declaration of 



123 



independence" than Thomas Jefferson's was 
made; the descendants of a German and 
Scotch-Irish immigration many years ago 
are around, testifying by name and appear- 
ance and manners to their original deriva- 
tion ; it is not North-eastern, but South-west- 
ern Carolina. Get upon this iron track that 
stretches away westward, and you will, with- 
in one hundred miles, be climbing the grades 
of that wonderful engineering which has 
pierced and crossed the Blue Ridge; you will 
be gazing upon the highest peaks this side 
of the Rocky Mountains, and viewing land- 
scapes unsurpassed for beauty and grandeur. 

Here are two mementos of heights yet 
beyond those, on the border of Tennessee, 
which have been given rae: a beautiful cane of 
rhododendron (mountain laurel) and a quartz 
pebble, flattened and round and smooth, 
three inches wide, which was cut out of a 
deer's stomach, killed near a watering-place. 
Doubtless the animal swallowed it imbedded 
in a mass of the soft green moss they eat in 
hard weather. He "bit off more than he 
could chew," and so bolted his meal, and 
seemed to suffer no more from his indigesti- 



124 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



ble food than the English sailor who, it is re- 
ported, "swallowed sixteen jack-knives." 

But I am wandering — -not in a land of fa- 
ble; except, it may be, as to those "jack- 
knives ; v for them I am not responsible ; that 
case is in the medical reports. 

I have not been long domiciled when I am 
visited by that excellent Christian gentleman 
Dr. Black, presiding elder of the district, 
and Brother Wheeler, preacher in charge, 
and booked for a sermon Sunday morning. 
At night I preach for my friend Dr. Rumple, 
of the Presbyterian church. The Methodists 
have enlarged and improved their church. 
They have a pipe organ, well played, and a 
good quartet choir, who sing well and lead 
the people in plain tunes for the regular 
hymns. But the congregation did not sing 
very much. I prefer good singing by a choir, 
however small, to bad singing by a congre- 
gation ; the larger the worse, if the singing 
be bad. But we need not have either ex- 
treme. Our people are to blame when they 
do not study and try to sing well, and seek 
to be instructed and practice so as to swell 
the volume of singing in the church without 



The Old North State. 



125 



missing the time or uttering discord. No 
choir shall "do my singing/' though I shall 
be very thankful to have the leading and 
guidance which a good one furnishes; and 
will be careful to follow them and not tort- 
ure their souls by incorrect notes or untime- 
ly movements. 

The Baptists have at length erected a 
church here; they are still feeble in numbers 
and financial ability. But they and the 
Methodists — the denominations which reach 
the masses — grow and spread, while the 
Episcopalians remain about the same, or die 
out in the rural districts, and the Presbyteri- 
ans, once overwhelmingly predominant in 
this country, stand still, and though gener- 
ally strong make no advance. 

The railroads have changed the centers of 
population in this region somewhat. Where 
several meet population increases. Thus 
Greensboro has grown to six thousand per- 
haps, and Charlotte, which was smaller than 
Salisbury thirty-five years ago, has ten thou- 
sand, and is the livest town in the State. The 
mountain towns are growing — Morganton, 
Asheville, etc. A vast development has be- 



126 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



gun, and in due time the mineral riches of the 
great Blue Ridge and Alleghany section will 
be fully opened, and its vast capabilities as a 
grazing, agricultural, and manufacturing re- 
gion made known. It is no exaggeration to 
say that Piedmont and South-west Virginia, 
AVest Virginia, and Western North Carolina 
have enough in them to sustain and employ a 
population equal to that of Great Britain. A 
long time hence, when this scribe and his con- 
temporaries are in their graves and forgot- 
ten, as great a transformation will have come 
over these sections as would be palpable to 
a hero of King's Mountain or Cowpens could 
he come up out of his grave and see and un- 
derstand things of our day. 

Gold mining has been carried on in South- 
western Carolina for many years ; it has usu- 
ally proved a losing business to the last hold- 
ers. A very rich discovery has been lately 
made, it is said, near Salisbury ; the owner is 
not working, but trying to sell, but capital- 
ists are shy. 



I 



Gloomy Weather. 



127 



No. 20. 

GLOOMY WEATHER. 
T rains and it rains. Somewhere 
among the English-speaking peo- 
ple the expression obtains, "It 
rains cats and dogs." The precise origin of 
this is unknown to me; doubtless the mean- 
ing is a very unusual shower — as unusual as 
if it were " pitchforks," or the members of 
the animal family last named. But, how- 
ever droll this phraseology, I am sure of this, 
that if it had ever rained " cats and dogs," 
they would have " descended " in the fallings 
of this " spell." In my district we have had 
varieties of thin snow, sleet, and thunder and 
lightning, but no " Tom" or "Bowser" has 
" come clown," although a good many of 
both have probably "gone up," succumbing 
to the ills which cold and w r et bring upon the 
feline and canine race. 

Many have been the interruptions of di- 
vine service; few have been the full and 
crowded houses. Even in town there has 
been decline. Many appointments have fall- 




128 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 

en through, and the list of sermons preached 
has been considerably shorter than it was 
last year. More hours, however, for reading 
and thinking. Nature has felt the inclem- 
ent weather in all the departments of growth 
and floral beauty. The gentle approaches of 
spring have been imperceptible. The im- 
prudent bud or blossom that has ventured 
out to - breathe forth incense like a prayer" 
has had an untimely nipping; the green 
edgings and little patches under the fences 
and hedge-rows have been narrow and some- 
times singed in appearance; the trees and 
fields have worn a wintry look, and preached 
sermons on death rather than resurrection. 
The unkept and unsheltered forest nurseries 
have furnished scarcely a blossom; an early 
and diminutive pansy, a dandelion here and 
there on warm slopes, has rewarded a patient 
search. Hyacinths and crocuses have bloomed 
in open yards, and jonquils and the like, but 
by much help and protection and somewhat 
scantily. I have been longing to get within 
reach of my favorite wild flowers — to tickle 
thehepatiea leaves, and turn over the stems 
of trailing arbutus, and see if the adder's 



Gloomy Weather. 



129 



tongue has shot up out of the ground and 
pierced the dead leaves through with the dart 
of his pointed leaf. But, perhaps, if allowed, 
I would have been searching, in this late 
season, in vain for bloom. Vegetation has 
been wearing Charles V.'s early motto, u Non- 
dum." 

These gloomy days — with the light of the 
sun darkened, and every thing dripping about 
us, confining us to our houses a great deal, 
and so narrowing the area of our activities 
and enjoyments — are they not symbolical of 
certain seasons of our religious life? Says 
the poet Longfellow: 

Into each life some rain must fall ; 
Some days must be dark and dreary. 

And if this be true as to the mixture of good 
and evil, of sorrow and joy, in common life, 
it is doubtless ordinarily true as to the light 
and shade of spiritual life. Some souls may 
attain a state of unbroken delight and satis- 
faction, but for the great majority there are 
decided fluctuations. I believe very decided- 
ly that all may attain a serene and settled 
faith and love, ready for every trial and vic- 
torious over sin and the world, but with these 
9 



180 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



some days will be balmy as May and bright 
as June, and others cold and dark as Decem- 
ber. Outward circumstances will change, 
and require adjustments of faith and hope 
and love and patience to meet them; and be- 
fore these become habitual and settled the 
new aspect of affairs will be chilly and 
gloomy. "The clouds'" will "return after 
the rain."' a momentary glimpse of fairer sky 
be succeeded by thicker screens of vapor and 
heavier down-pourings. 

The rainy season has its meteorological 
justification; it is necessary and in the end 
beneficial to climate and agriculture. And 
so of our spiritual dark days. They have 
their uses. Being such as we are, we need 
them. As nobody sighs for a country on 
earth where it never rains, but where sun- 
shine is a perpetual burning glare, so no- 
body wants this life to be unalloyed — unless, 
indeed, the unbeliever in another life. The 
Christian is simply led by his saddened ex- 
periences to long and pray: 

" Take me to Thee up on high, 
Where winter and clouds are no more.'' 

"There everlasting spring abides.'' It is the 



Gloomy Weather, 



131 



only country that could stand that state of 
things. When we are gone to " the land of 
the leal," where sin is banished and God 
reigns in a kingdom that cannot be moved, 
we shall be able to do without the discipline 
of chastening and clouds and dark days. 
Till then, let it rain on according to His will 
w 7 ho guides the clouds in the natural and re- 
ligious atmosphere. 

. . . Moist and heat and dry 

Shall foster and mature the grain 
For garners in the sky. 



132 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



No. 21. 

SYSTEMATIC MEN. 
HE winter is past and gone; the 
time of flowers and song-birds is 
come. The gloomy weather has 
ceased; some weeks of comparative dryness 
and warmth have rejoiced the soul of the 
husbandmen and made the roads quite prac- 
ticable, which had before been well-ni^h im- 
passable. 

The energetic itinerants, baffled hitherto, 
but not defeated or discouraged, will begin 
afresh, and with good-will, and hopefulness, 
their partially suspended and oft interrupt- 
ed work. Every church will put forth 
buds of promise, and all over the district 
there will be smiling faces and hopeful 
hearts. 

I risk nothing in prophesying that a cer- 
tain class of men among the preachers and 
church officers will at once take the start and 
keep it. These are the systematic men; the 
men who do not work at hap-hazard, but 
plan what they haw to do, and habitually 




Systematic Men. 133 



keep an orderly account of all their transac- 
tions and the results of them. 

Generally, the man of system manifests 
his propensity in every direction. He has 
lists and memorandum-book, and knows 
where everything is and w T hat everybody un- 
der his control is doing. I have often been 
half amused, half provoked, at the jumble 
which unsystematic men make of the mate- 
rials of their labor. They lose an immense 
amount of time looking for things. Nothing 
is ever exactly at hand ; it has to be searched 
for just when required, and is hardly ever 
promptly found. Not so w T ith the systematic 
man. He can put his linger on whatever he 
needs, at a moment's notice; has considered 
the matter in advance, planned how to man- 
age it w T hen the time should come, and is not 
bewildered or flurried by the demand. He 
does not always succeed to the full degree of 
his purposes and hopes; but he has some re- 
source counted upon and laid by, and disap- 
pointment is never with him utterly blight- 
ing, nor failure overwhelming and complete. 
I have met with men that ran system to 
seed, and, like the tithers of "mint, anise, 



134 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



cummin, and rue' ; in our Lord's day, made 
more of their tables of u small things"" and 
their picayune lists and memoranda than of 
important events and momentous occasions. 
One of these fellows, with his inch-rule and 
petty measurements of flies' feet and moths' 
eyes, is a pest. But he is not so bad as a 
man that never has any thing in place, knows 
nothing with exactness, has no fixed arrange- 
ments, and catches up whatever comes near- 
est to him at the time of action. 

Sj^stematic men are a comfort to the pre- 
siding elder at Quarterly and District Con- 
ferences. They are in place, and the entries 
in reply to "Minute Questions'' and the like, 
which depend on them, are made exhaustive- 
ly and quickly. The bearing of their regu- 
lar habits upon study and pastoral visiting 
must be evident to any reflecting mind. By 
means of these, a man of ordinary ability 
may far surpass in usefulness, and even in 
acceptableness,a brilliant but irregular work- 
man. The simple element of reliableness 
makes all the difference. It is also another 
illustration of the hare and tortoise race. 
When system is combined with great ener- 



Systematic Men. 



135 



gy and uncommon gifts, the amount of work 
that can be put forth by a human being is 
utterly amazing. The last work, a posthu- 
mous one, of the late J. li. Green, author of 
the " History of the People of England," ap- 
pears, from its preface, to have been wrought 
out by the dying struggles of a man. whose 
systematic habits of study and work, by his 
wife's noble assistance, prevailed to produce 
one more monument of his historical genius, 
despite the prostration, pain, and nervous- 
ness of a fatal and rapidly progressing dis- 
ease. Enthusiasm was a tremendous force 
in his case, but it is evident that it would 
have amounted to little but for long-formed 
habits of systematic collecting, noting, and 
digesting of the materials he would have to 
employ. Little can be done to cure elderly 
men of a want of system ; it is like 44 putting 
new wine into old wine-skins; " they would 
not bear it. But the young man, especially 
the young preacher, the novice in our min- 
istry, may hear a word of exhortation on the 
subject with profit. Perhaps he already has 
begun in the right way. Let nothing torn 
you out of it. Beware of contracting slov- 



136 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



enly and irregular habits as you grow older. 
Keep your books and papers in an orderly 
and careful manner. If you cannot " do ev- 
ery thing by rule/'' have a clear and well-di- 
gested system of doing, by which you will 
know very well, at the beginning of every 
day, what you are going to attempt, and how 
it is to be done. Do not despise small mat- 
ters; keep an eye on details, and be ready to 
make use of them when necessary. Exact- 
ness and precision, when not unduly pro- 
moted to the place of even better things, are 
excellent, and often gain a victory where 
vagueness and uncertainty would amount to 
nothing. Some men have built a considera- 
ble reputation upon a high degree of these; 
and many a preacher has lost position and 
become a "wet log" because he was of no 
value except when discoursing of abstract 
questions and principles of the most general 
kind in the pulpit. He could not descend to 
statistics, collections, common-sense details; 
and was hedged out in all directions by the 
cry, " We want a practical and systematic 
preacher!" 



Machinery in the Church. 137 



No. 22. 

MACHINERY IN THE CHURCH. 

HE age is mechanical. Inventions 
are past numbering, and in noth- 
ing has the active Anglo-American 
mind been more restlessly and successfully 
employed than in the devising of means by 
which labor may be saved and the work of 
many men done by a few, and better done 
than ever. To some extent the same spirit 
has entered into ecclesiastical affairs, and 
there, too, u sought out many inventions." 
The homely machinery of our fathers has 
given place to " forty-horse power " agencies 
an.d boards. The horseback corps of Bish- 
ops, presiding elders, and circuit-riders, with 
an annually-appearing " book steward," and, 
after some time, the " college agent," here 
and there, has been succeeded by a " college " 
of Bishops, Book Agents, and Missionary 
Secretaries, and officers, and " boards," not 
innumerable by any means, but increasingly 
numerous. 

Is it not possible that the matter is over- 




138 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



done? Every thing at "head-quarters" is 
done by a "board/ 3 or its equivalent — which 
is all very well; but it seems to me that 
when in the Annual Conference, besides our 
finance board, our standing committees have 
been organized into - boards.*' and Sunday- 
schools and education, as well as missions 
and Church extension, must be put into 
"boards," the thing is getting rather stiff. 
The review of such subjects at the Annual 
Conference is necessarily brief and springing 
out of the occasion, and the attempt to im- 
part a durability to these organizations by 
appointing them so as to hold over proved, in 
our Conference, a complete failure the very 
first year. But by laio we have the name of 
'•board" riveted upon what is in every re- 
spect a committee, and which was as service- 
able by that form and name. 

What may grow into a great mischief has 
been doubtless little considered in this mat- 
ter. I refer to the tendency in all such organ- 
izations to take on more or less of the " close 
corporation " spirit. It is an easy growth in 
them to assume entire and. exclusive custody of 
the subjects embracer! in their charge, and 



Machinery in the Church. 



139 



to work toward turning the Annual Con- 
ferences into mere instruments for registering 
their acts. This is increased by the manage- 
ment of our time in our annual session. 
When we have a " statistical Bishop," who 
requests preachers to read their reports made 
to the Joint Board of Finance and the Con-, 
ference Secretary, and duly published in ex- 
tenso in the Minutes (the readers of which 
are the only people who pay the slightest 
attention to them elsewhere), the time is so 
taken up with that dreary performance, and 
the vain attempts to keep order during an ex- 
ercise in which nobody but the Bishop can 
affect to be interested, that, with the una- 
voidable routine business, the days slip away, 
and "the heel" of the session appears ere 
anybody outside of the numerous " boards" 
has considered or discussed any points not 
comparatively trivial. Then, when but a day 
or two remain to weigh and digest the in- 
formation and suggested action upon the 
subjects of Finance, Sunday-schools, Mis- 
sions, Publishing, and Education, communi- 
cated in the reports from boards and commit- 
tees, things are driven ahead under whip and 



140 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



spur, with the aid of a large body of dispir- 
ited preachers, worn out by lengths of noth- 
ings which have deployed before them in 
almost interminable succession day by day; 
and. as happened at one of our Conferences, 
a long report on one of the most important 
subjects, containing recommendation of very 
questionable action, is put upon its passage, 
without an explanation or a single effort to 
look at the difficulties involved. And when 
the President of the Conference is not an un- 
conscious time-waster, the body itself allows 
the most important boards and committees 
to delay to the last moment. It would be 
well for every committee and board to re- 
port, unless on some small matter of detail, 
on Monday, and some on Saturday^ that there 
may he f ull consideration in Conference. The 
contrary practice results in increasing rest- 
lessness on the part of boards at having their 
views objected to, and to criticisms after Con- 
ference, which generally lead to irritating 
controversies and prolonged misunderstand- 
ings. In a session of seven or eight days, at 
least three or four should be devoted to calm 
and thorough ventilation of these reports. 



Machinery in the Church. 141 



But some say, 44 Of what value is discus- 
sion? We do not need talk. The board con- 
siders the subject, and its action and report 
need no prolonged talk about the subject." 
Discussion need not be mere talk. In a de- 
liberative body it should be short and direct* 
It is comparison of many opinions that settles 
the mind of such a body. And how oft it 
occurs that a paper, which seemed faultless 
and exact and well-conceived, is found to be 
very defective when some sharp-sighted mem- 
ber goes to searching it. Under his dissect- 
ing-knife, what looked sound enough shows 
some ugly spots. And again, a plausible ob- 
jection is overthrown by discussion, and the 
approval of the paper, shaken at first, be- 
comes clear and undoubted. Open and free 
discussion is fatal to the spirit of dictation — 
which insensibly forms in certain minds and 
around certain bodies — and widens the field 
of view for every member of the Conference, 
except in the case of one who is so self-con- 
ceited as to suppose that nothing can be add- 
ed to his knowledge or his wisdom. 

The increase of machinery, more especially 
apparent at our Annual Conferences, has 



142 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



been progressively impairing the devoutness 
of those assemblies. It was no idle word 
when our fathers proposed to " do even' thing 
as in the immediate presence of God." And 
the religions services were unusual] v fervent 
and edifying. At some of the earlier Con- 
ferences, attended by even so young a mem- 
ber as myself, there was a morning prayer- 
meeting of a half-hour or so on first meet- 
ing. Xow there are anniversaries and meet- 
ings "in the interest of' 7 this or that, until 
preaching, save on Sunday, " hides its dimin- 
ished head"' at all the chief churches. And 
the concourse of strangers, representing this 
"board" and that, men necessarily///// of 
their particular business, gives a hue of spe- 
cialties to our general proceedings, by which 
we approach nearer and nearer to the idea 
of a Baptist Association, and depart more 
and more from that of a Methodist Confer- 
ence of traveling preachers. 

But I have gossiped long enough on this 
head. This lovely morning, following three 
or four gloomy days, has made me garrulous 
like the birds, who are telling each other in 
tree and shrubbery what they think of mat- 



Machinery in the Church, 



143 



ters and things. Specially is that fussy little 
rascal, the English sparrow, uttering* his 
sharp chirp. He is a new "board" in the 
department of ornithology that is an inva- 
sion of old customs and a multiplier of mis- 
chief. Why, will you believe it, gentle read- 
er, I saw the other day, in the Capitol Square 
at Richmond, that he had built a nest or two 
in Thomas Jefferson's vest-pocket, and had 
been Trying to get inside of the roll of the 
Declaration of Independence? I would like 
his report to be discussed by a numerous 
conference of sparrow-haw T ks and butcher- 
birds. 



144 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



No. 23. 

MUSIC IN OLDEN DAYS. 
ALKIXG the other day through 
the old "Methodist Cemetery," as 
it was called when I was a boy, 
which lies near the head of Fifth street, in 
Lynchburg, Va., I saw a marble slab erected 
to the memory of "Blind Billy," the negro 
fife-player, whom all older Lynchburgers 
recollect. What a train of thought started on 
sight of that simple inscription ! The blind 
lifer, as I often saw him, rose to my inward 
sight marching on the street, or at the "gen- 
eral musters" of the country along the dusty 
country roads, between two drummers, one 
on each side, who, while sustaining with tre- 
mendous clatter the noisy accompaniment to 
Billy's ear-piercing instrument, served the 
purpose of guides to him also. Lost to all 
save the music which rushed in waves of 
rapture through his brain, his sightless eyes 
upturned and the face expressive of complete 
transport, he played for hours and marched 
and countermarched, or, when he halted, 




Music in Olden Days. 



145 



beat time with his foot while the unsophisti- 
cated natives heard the "Soldier's Joy," 
" Gilderoy ," or " White Cockade," " Barba- 
ra Allen/' or " The Girl I Left Behind Me," 
played with a spirit and expression never ex- 
celled. The sound of that fife seemed to get 
into the air and go all over the ground. It 
made itself part of those scenes — as unfor- 
getable as the uniforms and horses of the 
militia regimental officers or the cake-carts 
and candy-stands. The last strains attended 
the setting sun, or perhaps, if Billy and his 
drum comrades remained over night, the 
plaintive melodies I shall presently allude to 
stole softly (though high and piercing) across 
"the dewy steeps of air" from the precincts 
of the village inn to the chambers of senti- 
mental and solitary listeners. These tunes 
were oftenest heard, however, to perfection 
at night in Lynchburg itself. Somewhere on 
the street, at some shop where he was re- 
garded as an acquisition, or feed to come 
regularly, he was standing at some aperture, 
and for love of music more than any other 
motive discoursing on his beloved fife 
strains "in sweetness to outlast the morn." 
10 



146 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



I remember particularly two — " Kathleen 
O'More " and c< Wandering Willie." As 
rendered by Billy, these melodies were en- 
dowed with a matchless pathos. If you 
knew the poetry, your heart ached over 
" poor little Kathleen " and her heart-broken 
lover, and the red-breast was more sacred in 
your eyes, as in his, because it loved the 
church-yard and there "hopped lightly o'er 
Kathleen,'' the lovely little creature conse- 
crated by an early death. I have never been 
able to find in print the melody of " Wan- 
dering Willie " he played. Where he got it 
of course I have no idea; he heard it first, 
probably, from some wandering musician, it 
may be, with bagpipe or fiddle. But it is 
lovelier and tenderer far and truer to the 
words than the airs I have seen in "Scotch 
songs" of various collections. I suspect it 
is older, and like the ballads of the border" 
traveled to this side of the Atlantic by tra- 
dition. Had that wandering lover, afloat on 
the raging billows, heard Billy's melody and 
Burns's words with it. treason and faithless- 
ness, if dawning there, would have fled from 
his heart, fiends exorcised by the power of 



Music in Olden Days. 147 



music; and he would have sailed back to " his 
Nannie" over miles of main and despite all 
the storms of an angry ocean. Across the 
gap of nearly forty years that song comes 
to my ear. It is a bright, soft night. The 
moon is full, and sheds its mild luster over 
pavements and piles of brick and stone. I 
am in bed, but not sleepy, though a more or 
less tired boy. For " mine ear " is " attent- 
ive " to Billy's fife. As thrilling as the notes 
of that other wonderful natural musician, 
the wood-thrush, the note trembles on the 
air. It is loud and distinct, yet not harsh or 
obtrusive. The tempo is instinctively well 
taken, the musician's soul is in it, and no 
money could buy such fidelity to the idea of 
the composer as Billy's love will furnish. As 
I lie awake and listening, imagination takes 
me captive. Common life drops out of sight. 
I feel every note, and wish he would play till 
day-break. As the pathos renews itself with 
the oft-repeated strain, growing tenderer and 
tenderer, mounting toward heaven in great- 
er purity and power, I feel the tears starting 
to my eyes. Just then he stops, and like his 
brother musician of the wood — is gone. Un- 



148 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



like the bird, he does not warble that tink- 
ling, pathetic trill from some greater distance. 
His bed-time has come, or the shop. is shut 
up, and Billy will soon be under the spell of 
death's brother — prophetic of that other 
stronger spell which holds him now in clay 
and silence. And, as it is now, I listen in 
vain, and retain only the memory of that 
matchless fife. 



Protracted Meetings. 



149 



No. 24. 
PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 

HE season for these meetings draws 
nigh. The average Methodists 
think their Church is about ruined 
without a protracted meeting annually. 
They may have had excellent preaching, 
without exception, and a great deal of it 
statedly; the Sunday-school may be flour- 
ishing, and the general state of piety, judg- 
ing by the lives and works of the people, en- 
couraging; but still the successor of the old 
"two-days' meeting" must have his chance, 
and a week or more with 64 ail-day service" 
must be spent in preaching to the unconvert- 
ed. Much of this amounts to but little; 
there is u 'twixt promise and performance 
rare proportion !" yet it is going to be done, 
and our object is not to prevent it, but to 
make some suggestions which may possibly 
improve the results. 

The real success of a meeting depends 
much on the preaching; largely, doubtless, 
upon the prayers and fervent spirit of the 




150 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



people, but in these the preaching is a large 
and influential factor. In what respects, 
then, would we seek to improve the preach- 
ing? 

1. Has it not been hortatory to too large 
an extent? It is often said that people un- 
derstand well enough; what they need is to 
be persuaded to act. But this is less true 
than we suppose. Many will not act because 
their ideas are confused. There is great need 
of instruction. The great doctrines of re- 
ligion need to be expounded. The stock ar- 
guments against delay, the scriptural proof 
of God's readiness to save now, the sermons 
on quenching the Holy Spirit and sinning 
away grace, are somewhat stale and trite. 
But, handled with any vigor, the great fun- 
damental doctrines of Justification, Regen- 
eration, Repentance, Witness of the Spirit, 
Holiness, etc., can never become stale. Let 
us stir up the gift of God in us, and while 
we persuade and exhort men do it with the 
words of sound doctrine. Let the great num- 
bers who attend go away wiser and more 
thoughtful. Do not be afraid that you will 
not create a sensation and have a great move. 



Protracted Meetings, 



151 



Some of the grandest revivals of all times 
were generated in connection with powerful, 
thoughtful, reasoning preaching. 

2. Has it not been too general? The par- 
tridge-hunter soon learns that he does little 
execution by tiring loosely 44 into the covey." 
He must single out the bird and take aim 
every time. Far or near, he will kill then. 
So indefinite talk, which spends itself upon 
general propositions vaguely applied, will not 
find a real mark. The idea is to make some 
hearer cry out, "My conscience felt and owned 
the guilt!" By close and searching applica- 
tion a general doctrine can be brought home. 
We must beware of having our congregation 
made up of Betty Raskellys (as Betty was at 
first) who will think we are speaking of 
" things that happened a longtime ago, about 
people who lived a long time since, in a coun- 
try a long way oft'." Make them realize that 
you mean them — that you believe they are 
sinners and need to repent at once. Draw 
pictures from real life. Do not lampoon, but 
be pointed, direct, unflattering. Preach in 
reproof of sins that are committed and pop- 
ular in your community. Stir up the whis- 



152 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



ky-seller,the Sabbath-breaker, the drunkard, 
the cheat, the fornicator, the lazy man. Be 
prudent, but " cry aloud and spare not." 

3. Have we not omitted to a hurtful ex- 
tent the custom of our fathers, of bringing in' 
allusions to experience? How interesting to 
all classes of people, to the unconverted often, 
are lively love-feasts or experience-meetings ! 
It is because they are concrete religion; they 
are specimens of the individual life — the act- 
ual warfare between the flesh and the Spirit. 
It was a good armory from which to draw 
weapons in the olden time — the experience 
of the preachers themselves. Let us return 
somewhat to that method. Out of your own 
life and that of other men of God illustrate 
the abstract truths of vital religion. Let the 
people feel that it is a matter of common 
daily life about which we preach — something 
not far off as the Middle Ages and intangi- 
ble as superstitious legends, but matter of 
actual trial and proof with us of to-day. 
Sermons will thus be fresher, simpler, and 
more effective. Moody and the other evan- 
gelists of our day employ this method. They 
tell what happened at such a place and time, 



Protracted Meetings. 



153 



give names and dates and actual conversa- 
tions. Methodist literature and biography 
are full of materials for this purpose; and de- 
spise not your own experience. An extract 
from it may be the smooth pebble from the 
brook that shall kill a Goliath. 

A word about singing. To our ears the 
singing in our meetings often sounds tame. 
One rarely hears now — thanks to God for it ! — 
the doggerel choruses that in so many places 
disgraced our singing and brought our intel- 
ligence into question. Moody and Sankey 
have done a great service in killing off' these. 
May our ears never again be afflicted with 
u Hail j bail, hail! 7 ' or u Brethren, will you 
meet me?" or " I have a father (mother, 
brother, and innumerable relations) in the 
promised land! " nor have the strong, nervous 
lines of such a hymn as "Jesus, my all, to 
heaven is gone," dislocated by intervening 
and uncongenial scraps, such as " I am bound 
for the land of Canaan!" But there is a tend- 
ency to drag, as if the pieces were over- 
familiar, or were sung without feeling or 
thought. Let us begin to revive the great 
Methodist revival hymns ana the tunes with 



154 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



them. Study anew that part of our hymn- 
book. The Methodists have always been a 
great singing people. Let us stand by our 
ancient colors in this respect, singing "with 
the spirit and with the understanding also." 



The Death of the Old. 155 



No. 25. 

THE DEATH OF THE OLD. 
ORE than six months of the Con- 
ference year have passed, and so 
far only one of our preachers has 
fallen — that noble veteran, George W. Nol- 
ley, first on our list in length of service, and 
just on the verge of four-score. For a num- 
ber of years past our annual losses have been 
of men past sixty. The year that slew Dun- 
can and Hodges has had no fellow since that 
sad date. The blade of the Great Reaper 
lately grazed another of our older and most 
valued men, and made us hold our breath 
for days together till we heard the steps of 
the destroyer die away in the distance. And 
we have a list of aged men lingering among 
us yet, dear and honored, bound to us by the 
associations and labors of many years. The 
heats of summer, the malarial vapors of 
autumn, the chilling winds of incipient win- 
ter, are yet to be passed by them ere our next 
assemblage in Virginia's " Hill City." Will 
another of these faithful men of God, full of 




156 



Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



rears and labors.be taken from us ? or will the 
old Ashland hero sleep alone as the harvest 
of death among us this year? 

Such questions passing through my mind 
have recalled a passage, perhaps forgotten by 
its author in the distinguished and impor- 
tant work of his pen in later years, which 
accidentally fell under my eye some time 
since and was preserved. For beauty of 
thought and elegance of diction it is worthy 
of a place among gems of our language. 

More than twenty years ago. in the obitu- 
ary of an affed citizen. Dr. J. C. Southall 
(now of the Central Presbyterian), then an 
editor in Charlottesville, wrote as follows: 

'•The death of the young is perhaps the 
more startling; but, to the contemplative 
mind, the death of the aged, the disappear- 
ance of the ripened intelligence of almost a 
century, with all its manifold experience and 
treasures of memory, and in the present case 
that long life spanning like an arch two great 
historic epochs — this, perhaps, leaves a more 
solemn impression than when some spring- 
tide flower drops its bloom. That is the de- 
cay of some stately oak that has struck its 



The Death of the Old 



157 



roots deep into the soil and thrown out noble 
and sheltering branches, identified with the 
landscape, associated with the life of many 
human beings." 

The imagery of this extract is exceeding- 
ly fine. I have seen many a " spring-tide 
flower'' drop its bloom. There is a species 
of bell, a delicate pink in color, low in growth, 
and abundant in flowers, which in late sum- 
mer and early autumn often beautifies the 
shady or damp paths or borders of streams. 
Short-lived at best, it is especially so when 
culled. U A thing of beauty," indeed, frail 
and delicate, its fading and falling bloom is 
a fitting comparison for the youthful beauty, 
" the grace of the fashion " of which so often 
u perisheth " in human society. 

A bed of crane's-bill filling a small cove un- 
der a bank, w T hich I showed a friend in an 
afternoon's walk, was one of the loveliest 
sights of this late spring. But a little more 
than a week afterward no particle of color 
was there. Those lovely petals, outspread 
in one solid mass of simple but incompara- 
ble bloom, lay "withered and dead." Such 
sights are familiar to one whose native tastes 



158 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



carry his feet among the haunts of the wild 
flowers. And hardly less familiar to us are 
the drooping and fading away of loveliness 
of person and rare endowments of mind and 
heart, fitted to charm every beholder. 

There is no flock, however watched or tended, 
But one dead lamb is there. 

But I have seen 4 ' the decay of" few " stately 
oaks." One is indelibly graven on my memo- 
ry. It stood on the side of a beautiful stretch 
of level road, in a hilly region near the mount- 
ains. There was no other tree of great size 
along the road for a mile and a half. It was 
a huge white-oak, branching in every direc- 
tion at ten or twelve feet from the ground, 
and spreading its lusty arms to a great dis- 
tance. If not a "boundless contiguity of 
shade, 7 ' it was a delightful canopy for man 
and beast in the heat of summer; and the 
tired, dusty, and heated traveler halted be 
ueath its welcome coolness and dense pro- 
tection, and felt a bond of hearty sympathy 
with panting sheep or lolling cattle or stamp- 
ing colts on the other side of the fence in- 
side the inclosure. Spending many summers 
less than a mile off, I not only passed it in 



The Death of the Old. 



159 



frequent journeys, but on hot summer nights 
delighted to walk up to its foot and enjoy 
the night breeze while I peeped from beneath 
its extended arms at the stars in their silent 
march across the sky. Ofttimes I blessed 
the man that spared it from the original for- 
est cleared away for a wide expanse; admired 
its lovely globular head and pale, smooth 
leaves, and in autumn its abundant "mast/' 
An evil spirit entered into the owner of that 
land. He cut off every branch, making a 
large pile of fire-wood (doubtless excellent), 
and left the stump an unsightly column, like 
a sign-post. Nature struggled hard. Old as 
the tree must have been, it put out bunches 
of sprouts from the mangled stumps of its 
limbs. They took on some coarse but large 
leaves, and strove to grow and flourish as of 
yore. I could imagine the tree to be con- 
scious, and that it felt like the shorn Samson 
when he awoke out of the fatal sleep, and 
said, " I will go out, as at other times be- 
fore, and shake myself." But, as in his case, 
it was too late. "When I last saw it the 
sprouts were withered, and the loosening 
bark and burned-like look of the cut ends 



160 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



of boughs showed that Byron's words were 
fulfilled: 

The massy trunk the ruin feels, 
And never more a leaf reveals. 

I had sometimes thought, with a sadden- 
ing realization of the brevity of human life, 
that it would probably be still green and vig- 
orous long after I had ceased to breathe, and 
shelter many a way-worn traveler or tired 
beast when I should be forgotten of men 
and my place know me no more. But I have 
lived to write its obituary. With a deep feel- 
ing of condemnation of the barbarian who 
destroyed it, of the vandalism that would not 
preserve such a feature of the rural landscape, 
such a glory of the way-side, I record its 
end. And doubtless Dr. Southall was right. 
The aged, and especially the aged good man, 
is like such an oak. and his death makes on 
"the contemplative mind an impression as 
solemn and deep as that I experienced when 
last I rode along that way and remembered 
the tree of former years. Its short and dis- 
figured trunk was like the fresh red grave 
of a patriarch, before grass or tombstone is 
there to break the dreariness of naked death. 



The Death of the Old. 161 

The death of the young startles and touches 
as when a bloom of rare loveliness drops 
from the flower-stalk to lie irrecoverably 
tarnished and speedily decay and disappear. 
In poetry and fiction the death of the young 
has furnished a theme of irresistible pathos. 
But deeper feeling wakes in view of "the 
disappearance of a ripened intelligence." 
Whither gone and to what future destiny? 
Earthly hopes have been disappointed and 
have perished; the companions of youth and 
active life are long since gone; a new stage 
of life is ushered in on every side with actors 
unrecognized; customs and fashions are won- 
derfully transformed; ' there is no more a 
place here for the octogenarian. He sighs 
to be gone, and sees beckoning hands and 
hears voices calling him, out of the misty 
unknown. How thrilling the contemplation 
of a great and entire change to him, who car- 
ries into eternity the " manifold experience," 
the u treasured memories " of almost a cent- 
ury! Can we bury him, or think of him 
when we see his vacant chair, as of an in- 
fant of days, or even as of the youthful maid- 
en dying at " sweet sixteen?" 
11 



162 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 




No. 26. 

THE RED SUNSETS. 
E are having a repetition of this 
remarkable phenomenon of last 
year. A red sunset! Why, that 
is nothing strange or unusual. Certainly 
not, a sunset of brilliant coloring and clouds 
touched with red when the sunlight is ut- 
terly gone. Familiar prophecy of what we 
have had quite enough of this year — dry 
weather! But coloring so red, so deep, so 
vivid, so intense, and so many sunsets of this 
kind, day after day, certainly these are not 
common. These years, 1883 and 1884, will 
be unusual, I think, for that. The philoso- 
phers made no satisfactory explanation or 
discovery about them last fall. One astrono- 
mer saw in his telescope, when directed at 
twilight near the point of sunsetting, a flight 
of multitudinous telescopic meteors. It was 
conjectured that such a stream of them might 
somehow color the sunsets after this unusual 
fashion. Possibly; but all the meteors or 
shooting-stars shine with a white light. They 



The Rfd Sunsets. 



163 



flash across the vault of heaven, leaving 
streaks of yellow-whitish color similar to the 
gleams of lightning in a thunder-storm. I 
never detected in one the violet tint that 
one sometimes perceives in lightning. They 
give not the faintest hint of red in any con- 
ceivable shade. Whatever their cause, our 
autumn sky has glorified itself again with 
these surpassingly beautiful sunset hues. The 
parched ground and dwindling water-courses, 
the scorched and dry herbage and the dusty 
plains, are depressing; but who can behold 
these gorgeous ernblazonings of the western 
heavens without emotion, without an exalt- 
ing, thrilling sensation ? I saw one such 
sunset under touching and suggestive cir- 
cumstances, a few days ago. A railroad 
train was carrying me along in view of some 
regions connected with my ministerial labors 
a good many years ago. I had not visited 
the place for a long time, nor indeed had but 
once been in sight of it. The village rose 
on my sight, distinct, but across a wide val- 
ley, and made a little gloomy by the ap- 
proaching evening shades. The sense of 
time, long-past events, quickened and in- 



164 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



creased a melancholy association of ideas 
otherwise already in my mind. When I first 
knew the place I became acquainted with a 
married couple, wedded but little longer 
than myself and wife. We were their guests, 
and a friendship began which was destined 
to become stronger and more intimate in 
later years. The young wife, not a mere 
girl, was lovely in person and character, and 
the center of life in her sweet home in that 
ancient village. Years passed, the war fol- 
lowing closely those pleasant days; we met 
again in another place, and renewed the old 
ties of acquaintance and friendship. In each 
family there were children growing up, and 
by that fair mother's side grew a lovely girl, 
destined to greater beauty than the mother's, 
and gifted with uncommon powers of fasci- 
nation. The mother's health had long been 
threatened, and seemed more fragile just- 
when the daughter had bloomed into full 
maturity of youthful loveliness, the attrac- 
tion in every assembly, the cynosure of ev- 
ery admiring eye. Alas! the arrow which 
had fatally wounded the mother passed un- 
suspected through the daughter's. heart also. 



The Red Sunsets. 



165 



Quickly, almost without warning, the deadly 
symptoms developed, progressed without ar- 
rest, and in less than a year she was gone. 
Strangely enough, the peril of her loved one 
seemed to act as a temporary cure of the 
mother. She appeared to be better, under- 
went without failing all the fatigue and mis- # 
ery of that long w r atching and waiting for 
death. But, when her darling was laid in 
the grave, she seemed no longer capable of 
resisting her enemy's approach, and, sinking 
steadily, in the course of two years lay by 
the side of her child, her grave by the side 
of that which had swallowed up beauty and 
grace and hope. The two graves were at 
that old village across the valley. I could 
not see them, but I knew they were there; 
I felt their presence. In the declining light 
of day the landscape was mournful ; it seemed 
to chant the dirge over buried love and joy 
and hope. My heart sunk with the feeling 
that this is the end of all. No one can stay 
the march of that dread procession by which 
life and all it holds dear here sweep into the 
remorseless abyss of the tomb. "What after 
death for me remains?" Just then the train, 



166 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



sweeping onward toward the east, brought 
the receding village and the crest of hills on 
which it stood against the sunset point, and 
the matchless hues of the "red sunset" rose 
above its trees and houses, above the spot 
where the grave-yard was. Next, above the 
g ground, was a very deep red, as of blood 

wrung from crushed and sorrowing hearts, 
and upward, suffusing the higher strata of 
air, was a delicate and indescribably beauti- 
ful rose and violet tint intermingled, blend- 
ing with the white rays of the twilight. It 
rushed upon my heart that it is a natural 
- prophecy of the resurrection. I felt the sup- 
port, the comfort of the hope of Christian- 
ity. The words of Beattie were echoed in 
my soul : 

See Truth, Love, and Mercy in triumph descending, 
And Xature all glowing in Eden's first bloom ; 

On the cold cheek of Death smiles and roses are blending, 
And Beauty immortal awakes from the tomb. 

The night fell around me in thicker, darker 
folds; but there were light and peace in my 
heart. Death had spoken in solemn tones; 
but Xature, clad in robes of light and love- 
liness, had proclaimed the gospel of immor- 
tality and salvation. 



u Custer's Last Charge" 



167 




No. 27. 

CUSTER'S LAST CHARGE." 
OME weeks ago I went with a 
friend to look at this painting, 
the work of the Virginia artist, 
Mr. Elder. It w^as about to be sent North 
for exhibition among Custer's own people, 
and probably for sale where money is more 
abundant among the patrons of art. I say 
" Custer's own people," not because I am dis- 
posed to admit, after twenty years' peace and 
quietness, that the Virginians are not " citi- 
zens of the United States" as much as they 
were in 1860, nor because I do not claim our 
share of the glory won by the deeds of any 
brave and gallant soldier of the United States 
army. No one appreciated Custer's intre- 
pidity and dash more than the men who fought 
him at Trevilian's and in the Valley. But 
Northern people are his people by blood and 
State lines, and by full alliance and sympa- 
thy in the civil war. And they should feel 
a deeper interest than we in his fame. But 
I am glad that a Virginia painter has placed 



168 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



on canvas the last sad scene in bis career, 
and immortalized, as I trust, that chivalric 
and desperate charge. 

It is a picture that thrills the beholder. 
Yon are .transported into the midst of that 
wild Western landscape and that mortal 
struggle with overwhelming numbers of 
savage foes. The artist has selected, with 
skill, the features of the combat which he 
has chosen to occupy the foreground. In 
the center, the United States cavalry conie 
like a storm-cloud, Custer leading on a steed 
flying like the wind, while his upraised saber 
hewing his way has for the time cleared the 
front, Before him the bugler lies prostrate, 
his bugle yet clasped in his dead hand. Sev- 
eral troopers, wounded more or less desper- 
ately, perhaps in the previous hours of the 
fight, are on the ground almost under his 
feet. One of them has raised himself on his 
elbow, and done his last service by shooting 
through the heart an Indian chief on foot 
immediately before Custer, and about to 
close upon him with a huge hunting-knife 
open and uplifted. It may be he had ap- 
proached to scalp the soldier, who shot him 



" Caster' 's Last Charge" 



169 



when the charge was made. At any rate, 
he is finished! His left-hand thrown up in 
mortal agony, his features struck with death, 
his mighty figure falling backward, proclaim 
the soldier's deadly aim. He reminds me of 
a dying poacher, shot by the pursuers, and 
falling from a crossing-log with his load of 
chamois fastened to his shoulders, which I 
saw once in a piece of Tyrolean or German 
wood-carving. It was marvelous to me to 
see produced in wood those expressions of 
despair and mortal hurt. The same are here 
in this Indian. But somewhat farther to the 
left a yet more striking chief has drawn a 
bow, with arrow to the head, and is aiming 
directly at the great cavalry leader. As he 
is shooting by like a bolt from the skies, and 
his saber is about to descend upon the head 
of the chief who bars his passage, and who 
is just then shot by the prostrate cavalryman, 
he is in deadly peril from the shaft of the 
picturesque and athletic son of the forest. 
Beyond this Indian another is falling a vic- 
tim to the revolver of a trooper charging not 
far behind his leader; but none is able to 
send a shot, where just then it seems most 



170 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



needed, at the owner of that deadly bow. 
To the right, in front, are savages skulking 
behind dead horses, with arms in their hands, 
and on the extreme right, starting from the 
ground and ravines are scores of the enemy, 
rushing forward, in all sorts of attitudes, and 
tiring upon the charging column. The effect 
of their fire is seen in the reeling forms of 
horsemen behind the doomed General. The 
picture, in the few figures seen on the left, 
makes suggestion of the same movement 
from that direction to defeat this desperate 
effort to cut through. As yet the fatal mo- 
ment has not arrived. The fatal arrow has 
not left the string, nor any shot been fired to 
bring down that imposing form in the fore- 
ground. The horse, with extended nostrils, 
and feet that paw the air in flying leaps, is 
fleeter than death, and on his back sits su- 
perbly poised, in hunting-shirt costume, with 
grim determination, and tensely excited will 
and courage written on every feature, the 
hero of so many contests with greater foemen, 
about to fall by mere dint of numbers and 
overwhelming advantages of position and 
knowledge of the ground. He rides to his 



Custer's Last Charge.'" 171 



doom, as befits such a man, taking the last 
desperate chance. If his command can be 
rescued by desperate valor, it shall be. Woe 
to the enemy upon whom he charges while 
life yet animates that gallant heart and em- 
powers that sinewy arm ! 

The coloring and perspective are good. I 
presume the artist made special study, it may 
be by personal visit, of the very ground of 
the catastrophe. To one who has seen pict- 
ures drawn from nature of that region in 
Dakota, and the other Territories of the 
North-west, there is truth to nature in every 
trait. The plains and ravines of that home 
of the bison and red man, where Custer and 
his men perished, will always have on that 
account a more tragic interest. 

I trust that the last of such encounters as 
this has taken place. Until the eating tooth 
of time has devoured the race of Indians, or 
the happier food of civilization has assimi- 
lated them to such conformity with the dom- 
inant race in habits and manners as will re- 
move forever all occasions of conflict, I pray 
that no more blood of either may be shed in 
such war. I confess to have felt a pitying 



172 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



admiration of even "Captain Jack" and -^Sit- 
ting Bull," still more of "Chief Joseph.' 7 a 
far nobler and better spirit, not stained, as 
the others, with treachery and murder. In 
the remote obscurity of ages without annals 
is the origin of these people. Their ances- 
tors may have been on a rude scale and with 
unmerciful power to the races of "Mound- 
builders/ 3 who once peopled the West, what 
the English and Anglo-American have been 
to them. Providence. I am certain, has done 
them no injustice. But may the last days 
of their existence be peaceful and bloodless; 
may no "Logan' 3 of the latter times recite 
in pathetic speech the extermination of his 
kinsmen by rifle and revolver: and may the 
Indian of the closing years of the nineteenth 
century be better represented by Checote 
than by Sitting Bull: 



Ice-making. 



173 



No. 28. 

ICE-MAKING. 
AYS a recent writer: " Of all the 
projects that have excited the 
ridicule of the unimaginative of 
times gone by, perhaps none has appeared 
more exceedingly funny and chimerical than 
that of producing at will, by mechanism op- 
erated by heat, a freezing cold, and that 
without the use of ice or any previously con- 
gealed substance, and without regard to at- 
mospheric temperature." In the city of 
Richmond there is a low brick building, on 
the western end of Canal street, upon which 
" the midsummer sun" does not shine "dim," 
but in full -orbed meridian splendor and 
power, out of which project pipes that by 
their hissing emission of steam give token 
more of a saw-mill than any thing else. The 
buzz of the saw, however, and harsh rending 
of plank do not issue from its peaceful inte- 
rior. " Positively no admittance except on 
business" warns off* the curious, and except 
an occasional workman going in and out, and 




174 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



the sallying forth of red-painted ice-carts, 
there is nothing to indicate that there is any 
thing particular going on, or the kind of 
business there transacted. 

I am told, for I have never been in it, that 
this is where ice is made artificial!}^ "by a 
mechanism operated by heat." " Without 
regard to atmospheric temperature," without 
use of any "previously congealed substance," 
in sultry, sweltering August, in mild, non- 
freezing winters, in Indian summer, and 
balmy spring, in the day-time, and at "three 
o'clock p.m." (the hottest part of hot days), 
they go on quietly making out "of James 
River water" ice, that never saw a pond or 
cool, sylvan retreat, which does not come 
from the Kennebec or anywhere else remote 
and nearer to the North Pole, but out of the 
laboratory of "fair science," which so far 
from frowning on its " humble birth " in that 
unpretending building, rejoices over its for- 
mation as one of its latest and greatest tri- 
umphs. And they sell it as cheaply as other 
ice. I do not know what particular process 
•is used at this ice-factory. I suppose little 
can be seen by inspection, and one must be 



Ice making. 



175 



somewhat acquainted with recent chemistry 
to appreciate what he can see. Some of the 
readers of the Advocate may, however, like 
to know something in general of the process 
of ice-making by artificial means; and, for 
their benefit, I make use of an article in the 
October number of the Popular Science 
Monthly, by Guy B. Seely, on the latest dis- 
covery in this direction, that of a Frenchman, 
now dead, Du Motay. The quotation at the 
beginning of this article is from Mr. Seely. 
The basis, he tells us, of the principal sys- 
tems has been "the volatilization of a liquid 
in vacuo by means of a gas-pump." Ether 
and ammonia have been the substances ex- 
perimented with chielly. " The object sought 
has been the most economical method of em- 
ploying those substances that are capable of 
producing the greatest degree of cold" (by 
volatilization). " But a difficulty is encoun- 
tered in the high pressures of the gases pro- 
duced in the pump:" the pressure increasing 
directly as the cold-producing power. The 
" obvious drawbacks" of such pressure are 
liability to explosion, inflammability, rapid 
wear and tear of the machinery, etc. Du 



176 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



Motay "sought to combine two or more 
liquids which should have the property, in 
combination, of mutually neutralizing the 
defective features they exhibited when used 
separately.*' He employed ether and sul- 
phurous acid. %; The inflammability of the 
ether was nullified by the sulphurous acid; 
a perfect lubricant was obtained, and the 
substance had no corrosive action on the 
metals employed." But. above all, the ether 
absorbs a large part of the gas of the acid, 
and " reduces the mechanical problem to 
that of liquefying a gas having a pressure 
not approximating that of sulphurous acid, 
viz,, fifty to eighty pounds or more per 
square inch, but barely more than that of 
ether itself, viz., twenty pounds.'' In other 
words, "the ether is found to have accom- 
plished the greater part of the work, and a 
law of nature governing the action of certain 
chemicals in combination is availed of to re- 
duce the mechanical labor of liquefaction to 
a minimum." It is this " mechanical labor" 
which requires a steam-engine or "mechan- 
ism operated by heat " to make cold. The 
gas produced by the volatilizing pump 



Ice-making. 



177 



worked by steam must be compressed by 
the machinery until it becomes a liquid 
again, that it may be available for further 
employment and be disposed of readily and 
profitably. Mr. Seely describes the process 
as follows : " The freezing agent, ethylo- 
sulphurous dioxide, or glycerine and am- 
monia, or whatever be the compound em- 
ployed, is placed within the ' refrigerator/ 
which consists of tubular coils immersed in 
an uncongealable mixture. A double-acting 
vacuum-pump volatilizes the agent in the 
refrigerator coils, and this is attended with 
the development of an intense cold which is 
communicated to the surrounding mixture, 
and the latter, by means of a circulating 
pump, is made to flow through a suitable 
tank containing vessels of water to be fro- 
zen. . . . The discharge pipe of the circu- 
lating pump communicates with a con- 
denser, ,, which receives the volatilized liquid, 
and where the gas is liquefied again and ul- 
timately restored to the refrigerator " to be 
again volatilized/' the waste being small, as 
of steam in low-pressure engines. " The 
time consumed in the process of freezing the 
12 



178 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



water-cans ranges from twenty-four to thir- 
ty-six hours.'" the insulation of the tanks be- 
ing more or less perfect in different mechan- 
isms, and causing delay when not perfect. 
I hope these extracts are intelligible enough 
to the ordinary reader to prevent his being 
as vague in his notions of ice-making as he 
probably is of the Bain printing telegraph. 

This artificial manufacture of ice is a great 
boon to hot regions and to us of temperate 
regions in mild winters; and as cold is man- 
ufactured, the process can be applied, and 
has been, to arrangements for cooling build- 
ings in intensely hot weather. That will 
probably always be a luxury, whereas the 
\ce is now very nearly a necessity of life, and 
is placed in reach of very poor people. 

My readers will permit a presiding elder 
to say that there is no need for a process of 
artificial ice-making in the churches. The 
natural production there is at present, like 
the condition of the iron furnaces and cotton 
factories, a case of over-production. The 
demand is fully met. We need heating, and 
not freezing; seventy-five degrees above, and 
not ten below, zero. 



Ice-making. 



179 



Come, Holy Dove, from the heavenly hill, 
And warm our frozen hearts. 

for men " fervent in spirit, serving the" 
Lord ! " We have a great many who are " not 
slothful in business/' But in spiritual affec- 
tions, religious activities, devout fervor, they 
are sadly deficient. Their spirits have got 
into the tanks of the ice-factory owned by 
Messrs. World, Flesh & Devil. May they 
have an explosion in that factory that will 
shatter the refrigerator and lay waste the 
gas-pump! 



180 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



No. 29. 

SORROWFUL HOLIDAYS. 
E rejoice to know that the time- 
honored seasons draw nigh in 
which custom and associations 
place happy greetings and social festivity. 
No churlish nature, in most of us, repels 
their bright approach. Certainly none in 
me stands guard to keep off these gladsome 
days. I am delighted to witness the gam- 
bols and frolicsome glee of children — the 
bright, hopeful talk and sports of young 
people, free of care and buoyant with the 
wine of healthy life in their veins, charm 
me, and almost make me wish myself young 
again. I never was given to unseemly dis- 
sipation, and do not admire the relish that 
some grown folks have for gayety and folly 
at the holidays, verging on, if not reaching 
into, drunkenness and the orgies of sensual- 
ism and utter ungodliness. Why should a 
rational being, because it is Christmas, for- 
get God and eternity and make himself a 
dog or a brute over eggnog, oyster-suppers, 




Sorrowful Holidays. 



181 



and riotous living generally? Why should 
he forsake home-life and innocent pleasures 
and spend the small hours of night at some 
club-house or loose-living man's room, and 
drink of the cess-pools of dissipation? "From 
all such withdraw thyself.' 5 But the pleas- 
ant Christmas dinner, the New-year reunions, 
uncursed by fashion and intemperance — the 
holiday enjoyments at once intellectual and 
elevating, the music, the reading, the social 
converse, the pure pleasures, the temporary 
laying aside of business cares, severe study, 
or labor— who w r as ever the worse for these? 
Pleasant recollections of them come across 
my heart-strings, and make music like the 
breathings of the zephyrs upon the ^Eolian 
harp. I see the Christmas-trees loaded and 
waiting at midnight for the little ones asleep 
in their cribs, whose chirping at awaking 
will rival the birds of spring; I hear the 
tones of voices long silent, the strains of 
music from hands now cold in death; "the 
light of other days" breaks in upon my soul, 
and I thank God for past joys that have left 
no sting, for "days that are no more," but 
are unregretted and unforgotten. 



182 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



Sometimes a shadow falls athwart our holi- 
days, a shadow of sickness, bereavement, or 
some special loss or calamity. Such was my 
case this year. While people greeted each 
other and the season with gladness, while 
bells and merriment, and the evergreens and 
the carols, and the full tables and the crowded 
parlors, expressed the welcome of Christmas, 
I lay helpless well-nigh, unable to stand, and 
without movement save under the penalty 
of pain; I, who have known so little of se- 
rious sickness, have spent so little time in 
bed save to sleep, and that soundly; I, who 
have been such a pedestrian, have so loved 
to walk and rejoiced in my power to propel 
myself over hill and dale, if not to - paddle 
my own canoe," to climb mountains, and 
make long journeys. Happily, I could read, 
and had something to read; but, with all re- 
liefs obtainable, how irksome the days of 
confinement, the sense of disability, the mo- 
notony of a sick-bed life! How welcome 
the symptoms of approaching cure, the abil- 
ity to " rise up and walk," the clothing once 
more resumed, the breath of out-doors, the 
locomotion, though at first slow and cramped! 



Sorrowful Holidays. 183 



But Sorrow, grave brother of Pain, greeted 
me also. He came just before the new year. 
And as the light of that day broke, with so 
much of hope and gladness and joyful ex- 
pectation to many, it fell on me at the death- 
bed of a dear and treasured loved one. The 
bright, kind, tender eyes, full of sympathy 
and charity, were closed to be opened no 
more; the heaving breast still labored with 
the last efforts of dissolving nature, but the 
generous heart, so true, so high-toned, so 
unselfish, was soon to be still; the hands, so 
soft in their touch, so skillful, so wonderfully 
Teady in emergencies of life and death, were 
lying still or twitching with the slight shiv- 
ering, convulsive motion that seemed to 
shrink from the cold touch of Death, the 
enemy they had so often successfully resisted 
in others; the well-known features were set- 
tling into the calmness and unbroken repose 
of the last sleep. Two more days, winter 
days, short and cold, gloomy and withering 
in breath and aspect, were to be given of this 
" death in life;" but no glance of recogni- 
tion, no voice of cordial, affectionate greet- 
ing, no call for any aid nor any polite ac- 



184 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



knowledgment of any little service, should 
again give token of lingering on the shore 
of time. These had all gone out with the 
old year, dead in his time and lot. And 
then came the actual snapping of the links 
of life, attenuated to the last degree of thin- 
ness; the last moment, for which nothing 
seems altogether to prepare us, which has in 
it something of a surprise after all. A little 
gazing at the dead face, tender kisses upon 
the pale, cool brow; and after that — "earth 
to earth, ashes to ashes." We had tenderly 
followed him '-to the last lonely point of 
earth;" we had laid his remains by the side 
of the graves of his children— the four girls, 
from a lovely babe to a beautiful young wife, 
who had preceded him in the course of thirty 
years : and that drama of life was over. Forty 
years of rare public usefulness, a record of 
not having lived in vain, and, thank God 
too, of at last casting a weary head with re- 
pentant tears upon the Redeemer's breast 
"without one plea" but his blood, and all 
of earth to him is gone, and he is " beyond 
the sun." 

The new year has been crowned bv sorrow 



Sorrowful Holidays. 



185 



The chaplet is cold as the ice which holds 
the frosty ground and crackles under the foot ; 
it is also pure as the snow of winter; its les- 
son has no taint of evil or falsehood; it speaks 
of life eternal, of God, and the land where 
tears never fall. Listening to its teachings, 
self is withered and sin cast out. 



186 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



No. 30. 

A FUTURE STATE. 

most minds there are attractions 
in literature wherein the dread 
unknown, the mysterious and 
awful hereafter, is revealed. Be it that we 
know it is man's imagining, or dreaming, or 
surmising — still we are powerfully drawn to 
such pictures. From the plain but master- 
ful allegory of John Bunyan. with its River 
of Death and Celestial City — the city of 
which distant views were had from the De- 
lectable Mountains — to the "Physical Theo- 
ry of a Future Life,'" by Isaac Taylor, and 
"Beyond the Gates," by Elizabeth Stuart 
Phelps, and "A Little Pilgrim.'' by Mrs. OH- 
pliant; and, above all, the noble Christian 
poem of Bickersteth — " Yesterday. To-day. 
and Forever" — the theme finds new pens to 
treat it and an inexhaustible supply of read- 
ers. It is an involuntary tribute of human 
nature to the glory and importance of "the 
things that are not seen." It may be that 
curiosity, a prying into new and wonderful 




A Future Slate. 187 



matters, has part in this readiness to deal 
with such topics. But it is mainly a nobler 
feeling. It is a realization that surpassing 
interest attaches to the life to come which 
shall be eternal ; that its occupations and 
sources of enjoyment and satisfaction are of 4 
overwhelming significance to us who are so 
soon to enter upon them and rely upon them 
for our good. And it is a feeling after the 
loved and lost, as men sometimes in dreams 
and half-unconsciousness grope and grasp in 
the gloom of thought, if haply they may 
clasp to their aching and hungry hearts some 
long-absent dear one of the household group. 

I have spent some leisure hours of recent 
days in reading one of the books before 
named, " Beyond the Gates." One of the 
evangelists lately laboring in Richmond, I 
have understood, warned his hearers against 
reading it; and it is certainly not evangelical 
in its stand-point: rather it is rationalistic, 
" Broad Church," semi-Unitarian. It would 
be a misfortune indeed to receive any intima- 
tion from it which is contradicted by Script- 
ure. It more than hints, for example, at a 
second probation; it transfers to a high and 



188 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



most honorable felicity persons who have 
simply exhibited a great natural virtue, such 
as the sacrifice of life to save men in peril; 
it distinguishes dimly, if at all, between the 
faith of assent and that of the heart "with" 
which " man believeth unto righteousness." 
It, nevertheless, has many valuable features, 
and may be read with profit by many per- 
sons. Perhaps it is like a razor, not to be 
intrusted to children, and in the paw of a 
monkey useful to cut his own throat or 
wound seriously another animal, but valua- 
ble to the adult being with hirsute posses- 
sions. It may be judiciously employed to 
deepen the sense of the eternal life, so dull 
in us after all, and so easily dulled yet more 
into blunt forgetfulness of every thing outside 
the domain of sense. It contains some good 
lessons, impressively taught. The value of 
personal holiness is presented in a strong 
light; the love and sympathy of our Lord 
are beautifully exhibited — a poor, unhappy 
girl, who had none of her own family and 
kindred in the world of glory to welcome 
her, tells that she was met first by the Mas- 
ter himself, and greeted and protectingly ush- 



A Future State. 



189 



ered into its amazing and transcendent hap- 
piness; there are some ingenious and effect- 
ive touches concerning devoutness, submis- 
sion to the Divine will, Providence, etc. I 
am glad I read it; I think I have kept the 
wheat and let the chaff go. 

Nothing has ever impressed me more deep- 
ly than the first book of " Yesterday, To-day, 
and Forever' 9 — the Death of the Seer and 
his Descent into Hades. That brings home 
death and eternity very vividly to a soul yet 
in the flesh. But I have no faith in the pre- 
millennialism of the book, which is yet one 
of its most conspicuous features. Men like 
Bickersteth and Ryle cannot write without 
saying all they mean and know. So, Eliza- 
beth Stuart Phelps is earnest and outspoken; 
error with her is deeper and more injurious, 
but she is a disciple of our Lord, too; she 
loves him in sincerity. Many a Christian 
soul will enter into this extract, with which 
I close: 

" For I knew as I sat in that solemn hour, 
with my face to the sea and my soul with 
him, while sweeter than any song of all the 
waves of heaven or earth to sea-lovers, 



190 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



sounded his voice who did commune with 
me — verily I knew, for then and forever, that 
earth had been a void to me because I had 
him not, and that heaven could be no heaven 
to me without him. All which I had known 
of earthly love: all that I had missed; the 
dreams from which I had been startled ; the 
hopes that had evaded me; the patience 
which comes from knowing that one may not 
even try not to be misunderstood ; the strug- 
gle to keep a solitary heart sweet; the an- 
ticipation of desolate age which casts its 
shadow backward upon the dial of middle 
life; the paralysis of feeling which creeps 
on with its disuse; the distrust of one's 
atrophied faculties of loving; the sluggish 
wonder if one is ceasing to be lovable; the 
growing difficulty of explaining one's self 
when it is necessary, because no one being 
more than any other cares for the expla- 
nation ; the things which a lonely life con- 
verts into silence that cannot be broken, 
swept upon me like rapids, as turning to 
look into his dazzling face, I said: ' This — 
all this — he understands.'" 



Hollywood Cemetery. 



191 




No. 31. 

HOLLYWOOD CEMETERY. 

AKK! from the tombs a doleful 
sound!" is an exclamation which 
expresses with many persons the 



only feelings or sentiments connected in their 
minds with cemeteries. They hate with a 
deadly hatred allusions to death and the 
grave, and, if they could, would banish all 
recurrences of such disagreeable topics. But 
mortality is too vast and fresh a subject to 
be banished by a volition. It intrudes upon 
our thoughts; its sad and gloomy acces- 
sories force themselves upon our sight. 
"Avaunt! " we may exclaim, but the gloomy 
figure will not disappear. Doorbells or han- 
dles muffled with crape, tolling bells, slowly 
nodding hearses, freshly dug earth in omi- 
nous-looking mounds, black garments and sad 
countenances, desolate homes and painful 
vacancies in family circles, are in our sight 
or smiting our ears; and in the vicinity of 
our large towns the "cities of the dead" en- 
large their borders continually to remind us 



i92 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



unceasingly of " the inevitable hour' 3 which 
awaits us all. 

In the first series of these Recreations I 
wrote of the desirableness of cemeteries at 
all our country churches. My thoughts to- 
day are running on grave-yards and the 
tombs, but not with that particular applica- 
tion, nor with the gloomy and doleful asso- 
ciations of unbelief and worldliness. 

The celebrated cemetery of Hollywood — 
lovely indeed in natural situation and adorn- 
ment, and improved to a considerable de- 
gree by well-directed art — is within easy 
reach of a walker of moderate powers, and 
very often attracts my wandering footsteps. 
Alike in cold weather and in warm — most 
of all in the bright soft days of our fall sea- 
son, dreamy and sweet — I find its- secluded 
walks and vales a pleasant resort. The beau- 
ty of nature pleases the eye, the general as- 
pect of the place and its associations soothe 
restlessness, and in many ways wholesome 
lessons, not always sad nor ever very de- 
pressing, suggest themselves. 

I am drawn to it by the resting-places of 
that mortal part which was once inhabited 



Hollywood Cemetery. 193 



by many of my dear friends. The little spot 
they themselves do not occupy. That mound 
of earth does not cover James A. Dun- 
can, nor that grass-covered grave hide from 
sight the venerable and beloved George W. 
Langhorne. But they are the places of 
earth which hold the bodies once glorified by 
the presence of the spiritual intelligences we 
knew and loved, marred and decaying under 
the power of the grave now, but some day 
to be " raised in power" and reanimated by 
those intelligences. Sacred and dear, then, 
to sight and memory those hallowed spots — 
not to be avoided and glanced at with gloom 
and doubting fear and horror; but tenderly 
visited from time to time, helping us to think 
lovingly and with hope and Christian joy of 
them and their faith and love in Christ Jesus. 

It is a round of visits — sometimes shorter, 
sometimes longer, always sweetly consoling, 
with a subdued, partially melancholy satis- 
faction — that I pay when I take my walk 
through the cemetery. The number of 
friends to be called on enlarges steadily even 
here, far away from the scenes and friend- 
ships of my early life. Several have been 
13 



194 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



added of late. Brother ministers, fathers in 
Christ, some of whom I listened to and knew 
in my youth, and younger men, " mine equals 
and acquaintance,'' are here. I lovingly sa- 
lute them all. and linger near some of them 
with deeper affection. Faithful friends are 
here too. and some special cases — former pu- 
pils — upon whose early graves the tears of 
their old teacher have fallen. Green be the 
grass and sweet the flowers that cover their 
dust ! Beneath that mound is stilled the 
heart that once beat high with love and hope 
and trust and all sweet affections. I will 
come time and again to look upon it, and 
revive the thoughts of that faithful friend- 
ship which was unchanged and undimmed 
" even unto death.*' It must be fresh and 
strong and pure in heaven, though its min- 
istries on earth have ceased, or, if they reach 
me now. are bestowed upon an unconscious 
object. 

At least eight of the deceased ministers of 
our Conference are buried at Hollywood — 
over four of whom monuments are erected. 
A minister somewhat distinguished, of an- 
other Conference, is also interred here — the 



Hollywood Cemetery. 



195 



.Rev. M. M. Henkle, D.D., of the Tennessee 
Conference. He died during the war, in 
1864, and, I think, in a hospital while acting 
as chaplain. A head-board of plain wood, 
near the splendid Masonic monument of Dr. 
Dove, marks the resting-place of this man of 
God. Its inscription is fading, and the board 
itself must be near to utter decay. Perhaps 
we have waited long enough for his brethren 
to erect something more durable — let us in 
Virginia put a simple head-stone at the grave 
of a holy and useful man of no common or- 
der. The soil of the Old Dominion holds 
his bones — let her Methodist sons mark his 
o^rave. 



196 llecreations of a Presiding Elder. 



No. 32. 

MONUMENTS IN HOLLYWOOD. 

Y last paper referred to the natural 
beauty of Hollywood. It is in- 
deed " beautiful for situation," and 
its natural advantages have been availed of 
fill, from the ivy-covered lodge-gates onward 
to the new portion of the cemetery, every 
aspect of the vales and slopes and brooks ap- 
peals to the sense of beauty in every visitor. 
The natural growth of holly, cypress, sweet- 
gum, and oak receives a large accession, not 
out of proportion, however, of trees and 
shrubs not indigenous, such as magnolias and 
all kinds of evergreens. Flowering shrubs 
and plants are abundant, and in spring and 
summer "all looks flowery" and " sweet," 
with just enough that might be called " wild " 
to charm. 

The enlargement of the cemetery, made 
these latter years, is nearly destitute of trees. 
It lies high and dry, however, with a slight 
undulation, and atones for its bareness by 
the surpassingly delightful view of the river 




Monuments in Hollywood. 197 



scenery — the finest portion of "the Falls" 
being just opposite, as well as Bellisle. The 
finest monument in Hollywood, that of the 
late Charles Talbott, is in this part, and, to- 
gether with the granite columns in honor of 
Drs. PI inner and Jeter, may be seen from 
almost all points along the southern bank 
of the James. A liberal and judicious sys- 
tem of planting will soon leave little to be 
desired here. 

As many of my readers may never see 
Hollywood, some account of its monuments 
may not be uninteresting. 

On the loftiest point, near the edge of the 
old cemetery, and rather overhanging the 
river and canal, just above the old pump- 
house of the City Water-works, stands the 
modest mausoleum within whose open-work 
may be seen the granite sarcophagus inclos- 
ing the coffin of James Monroe, President of 
the United States from 1817 to 1825. In- 
cluding the recently inaugurated President 
Cleveland, twenty-two men have held this 
high office for whole terms or parts thereof. 
Only four remain alive, and one of these 
(Gen. U. S. Grant) is probably on his death- 



198 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



bed.* Three died on the 4th of July (Inde- 
pendence day), and President Monroe was 
one of these. A short inscription, on a cop- 
per-plate, says the remains of this " good and 
honored son? of Virginia were, by order of 
the General Assembly, removed from New 
York, where he died and was at first buried, 
to Hollywood July 5, 1858; so they will 
have slept this summer as long in the soil of 
Virginia as they did in that of "the Em- 
pire State/'' 

Mr. Monroe is eclipsed in history by the 
brighter names of his predecessors, Wash- 
ington, Jefferson, and Madison : but he was 
the central figure of a peaceful era, aud 
had no opposition to his election for either 
term, which fortune has fallen to nobody 
since, as it did to none before except Wash- 
ington. 

In the circle surrounding the mausoleum, 
m which are some striking monuments and 
names of distinction and interest, is the grave, 
as yet unmarked, of John Tyler, another 
Virginia President of the United States. A 

* Ex-President Grant died at Mt. McGregor, New York, 
July 23, 1885. 



Monuments in Hollywood. 199 



married daughter lies near him with a pretty 
carved head-stone. The father, a really great 
man in very many respects, partaker in the 
active politics of two historic epochs, was the 
first Vice-president who assumed the Presi- 
dency by reason of the death of his superior 
in office. Disappointing the party who elect- 
ed him, he incurred their bitter dislike, and 
Henry Clay, their great leader, dubbed Mr. 
Tyler " His Acciclency." But the fierce par- 
ty passions of over thirty years ago are bur- 
ied with the men. "Also their love and their 
hatred and their envy are now perished." The 
Legislature of Virginia should erect a mon- 
ument over the grave of ex-President Tyler. 
He is one of her greatest men; his resting- 
place should be marked. 

No other cemetery contains the graves of 
two Presidents, unless the two Adamses 
(John and John Qnincy) are buried to- 
gether at Quincy, Mass. The former died 
there, but the latter died in the House 
of Representatives at Washington in 1848. 
I do not remember, but probably his body 
was carried to Quincy. If so, that little 
old " town ' J and Richmond share the honor. 



200 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



The tornbs of other noted politicians ar- 
rest the eye as we wander over the grounds. 

A square, low, granite tomb near the splen- 
did monument of Mr. Talbott, in the new 
cemetery, bears this inscription: "Here lies 
John Randolph, of Roanoke. Born June 
2, 1773. Died May 24, 1833. His remains 
were removed from Roanoke, Charlotte coun- 
ty, Va., to this spot December 13, 1879." 
Unique, sensitive, proud, with a tongue like 
a Damascene blade, this most aristocratic of 
republicans will be remembered as long as 
eccentric genius is unfor^otten. Every thins; 
he had possessed an elegance peculiar to the 
man. My old friend, John C. Blackwell — 
who, alas! is gone to the world of spirits 
also — had one of the many copies of the Greek 
Testament collected by Randolph. It was 
Griesbach's edition, in binding and finish 
was singularly nice and beautiful, and was 
bought at the sale at Roanoke after the death 
of the srreat commoner. 

Xear to President Monroe's tomb, yet not 
in the circle around it, is the monument of 
Hon. James A. Seddon, Representative in 
Congress for several terms from the Rich- 



Monuments in Hollywood, 201 



mond District, and one of Jefferson Davis's 
Secretaries of War during the four years' 
life of the Confederate States. 

A massive granite monument is over a 
vault that will one day contain the dust of 
ex-Governor William Smith ("Extra Billy "), 
as it now does that of his wife and some of 
his sons. But the brave and strong old man, 
now an octogenarian, yet lingers on the shore 
of time. Letcher and Johnson, Wise and 
Floyd, Campbell and Gilmer, and others, are 
gone; the names of some of them " have been 
carved for many a year on the tomb;" but 
he is still among the younger men who knew 
the statesmen and politicians of ante helium, 
who went through the war of secession, and 
see the twentieth year since peace was made 
at Appomattox. 

Hollywood has several conspicuous monu- 
ments of ministers of the gospel; a number 
also sleep in graves not recognized by the 
general visitor. Besides those great lights 
of non-episcopal Churches already named 
(Jeter and Plumer), there are two Bishops 
interred here — Richard Channing Moore, of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, predeces- 



202 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



sor of the late Bishop Meade (he died in 
Lynchburg in 1841, having seen the minis- 
ters of his diocese increase from seven to 
ninety-five), and David S. Doggett, of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, whose 
eloquent preaching and comparatively recent 
death are within the memory of all of us. 

Tiie _ reat logician and debater of South- 
ern Methodism, ffm. A. Smith, D.D., lies 
beneath a plain and rather small stone shaft 
erected by his brethren; while a tall and 
beautiful column of granite, with polished 
faces, marks the spot where sleeps the incom- 
parable James A. Duncan. Two Presidents 
of Randolph-Macon are in Hollywood then, 
and inferior they were to none of that or any 
other college. The monument of Dr. Dun- 
can and the brief but most appropriate in- 
scriptions were described and given at length 
in the Advocate some years ago by Rev. W. 
E. Judkins. 

A tall granite column is at the refting- 
place of Rev. Wm. H. Starr, a gentle, faith- 
ful, holy man, father of Dr. Starr of our Con- 
ference, and himself a member of it for many 
years. 



Monuments in Hollywood. 203 



Dr. William J. Hoge, brother of Moses D. 
Hoge, D.D., and father of Rev. Peyton H. 
Hoge, an eloquent man and much lamented, 
lies underneath a beautiful marble monument 
erected by friends in iNew York, Baltimore, 
and Petersburg, at which last place he died 
during the war. 

Two other graves of ministers are marked 
—that of K W. Wilson, D.D., of the Bap- 
tist Church, who fell a victim in New Or- 
leans to the yellow fever of 1878, and that 
of the venerable Dr. Anderson Wade, of the 
Episcopal Church, long a resident in Charles 
City. 

Monuments very similar to Dr. Duncan's 
are in the new cemetery at the graves of Dr. 
W. S. Plumer and Dr. J. B. Jeter, the great 
Presbyterian and Baptist preachers, whose 
works and fame are coextensive with the 
bounds of their respective Churches. By i> 
remarkable coincidence these great men were 
born in the same year and month (July, 1802), 
died in the same year (1880), the one in Feb- 
ruary, the other in October, and sleep near 
each other in the same cemetery, the bury- 
ing-place of the city where each achieved 



204 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



great fame and left an indelible impress. 
The somewhat copious inscriptions on both 
monuments are excellent compositions; that 
on Dr. Plumer's the better, I think — senten- 
tious and appropriate, scriptural and elegant. 
That is lofty eulogium which declares that 
he w^as "a pastor, like the Good Shepherd, 
leading the flock beside the still waters, car- 
rying the lambs in his bosom; a preacher, 
eloquent, instructive, persuasive, scriptural, 
w^ise to win souls, knowing only Christ and 
him crucified." The description of his person- 
al appearance and traits is graphic: "A man 
of majestic form and patriarchal manners, per- 
fect integrity, apostolic fervor, truest friend- 
ship. " In both these saints was fulfilled that 
scripture which says, "With long life will I 
satisfy him, and show him my salvation." 
"Nevertheless, man being in [even such] 
honor abideth not." "Your fathers, where 
are they? and the prophets, do they live for- 
ever?" 

But I find my space giving out long before 
my subject, and must reserve further descrip- 
tions for another time. 



Monuments in Hollywood. 205 



No. 33. 

MONUMENTS IN HOLLYWOOD (CONTINUED). 

F literary men there are some ex- 
amples—notably, John R. Thomp- 
son, long the editor of the Southern 
Literary Messenger, whose tasteful monument, 
" erected by his Northern and Southern 
friends," says he was "the graceful poet, the 
brilliant writer, the steadfast friend, the loyal 
Virginian, the earnest and consistent Chris- 
tian." John Hampden Chamberlayne's sim- 
ple granite head-stone is on the. main "West 
Vale Avenue:" his brother-in-law, Dr. George 
W. Bagby ("O rare Ben Jonson!"), sleeps 
in Shockoe Hill Cemetery. A chaste, grave, 
and now somewhat old-looking monument 
of brown-stone covers the dust of Wm. Max- 
well, Esq., State Librarian (if I mistake not) 
in his time, and well known for years as a 
scholarly lawyer, 44 a promoter of education." 
In the circle near President Monroe is the 
monument of Matthew Fontaine Maury, the 
great author of the 44 Physical Geography of 
the Sea" and of the world-famous 44 Winds 




206 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



and Currents Charts/*' bv which Ions: vov- 
ages, like those to California and Australia, 
were shortened one-third, and the commerce 
of Great Britain alone estimated by a writer 
in one of the quarterlies to have been saved 
£10,000.000 per year. He founded the Xaval 
Observatory at Georgetown, and advanced it 
by his industrious service; retiring from it 
when the war of 1861 began, to serve his 
native State and section, and dying, after the 
strife was over, at the Virginia Military In- 
stitute, setting, with Gen. Lee at the neigh- 
boring Washington College, the great exam 
pie of pious submission to the will of God 
and of labor for the Southern youth. At 
least one of the successors he has had at the 
Observatory has been a man not wanting in 
learning and ability, but an avowed agnostic 
and unbeliever who has lent the strength of 
his mind and acquirements to the overthrow 
of faith in a personal God. I remember that 
the only time I ever heard and saw Maury 
(at the University of Virginia in 1855) he 
drew upon his observation of nature in a 
striking passage of his address, to confirm 
the faith of his. audience in a God of order, 



Monuments in Hollywood. 207 



might, and love. He was an old-fashioned 
Virginian, full of love of God's creation, and 
when he died requested that his body might 
be borne to its resting-place through the 
famous " Goshen Pass" when the rhododen- 
drons were in bloom. 

A few distinguished jurists are among the 
Hollywood dead. Judge Moore, of Alabama, 
has a beautiful monument of Tennessee mar- 
ble near the grave of Dr. Win. Hoge. A lit- 
tle north of his is the tomb of Judge Lyons, 
of the Richmond Hustings Court. Else- 
where lies that marvel of legal learning, 
Wm. Green, LL.D.; and the grave of the 
late Judge Robert Ould is just by the monu- 
ment he erected over his first wife's remains, 
a little way east of Bishop Doggett's. In 
like manner the grave of Judge R. II. Cole- 
man, of Fredericksburg, is near the monu- 
ment erected by students of the University 
to his son, a most promising youth, unfort- 
unately killed by a railroad train at Char- 
lottesville. 

War and soldiers are not forgotten in 
Hollywood, where lie the bodies of hundreds, 
perhaps thousands, of the men who bled for 



208 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



the " Lost Cause.' 7 The : * Confederate Monu- 
ment.'' a huge pyramid of unhewn stone, 
partially grown over with ivy and other 
creepers, towers majestically on the northern 
side of the old cemetery. It has a Latin in 
scription, often printed, but seen by few who 
visit it. The great heroes of the civil war, 
so far as the South is concerned, sleep at 
Lexington. But Hollywood holds one whose 
name will ever be the synonym of chivalric 
bravery. He fell at the conflict at Yellow 
Tavern, where, by dint of hammering with 
a comparative handful upon the vastly supe- 
rior forces of Sheridan, he compelled that 
clashing Federal officer to give over a ride 
into Richmond which was invitingly open 
before him. It is meet, then, that the body 
of gallant "Jeb" Stuart should be in keep- 
ing of the city he saved and died in saving. 
A tall column of granite, with simple inscrip- 
tion, tells that he fell at the early age of 
thirty-one. The words " Lieut. -gen. A. P. 
Hill" on the flat granite curbing, inside of 
which he is ' ; alone in his glory,'' point to 
the spot where lies that brave and successful 
lieutenant of Jackson, on whose dying lips 




Monuments in Hollywood, 



209 



his name lingered. He was the only general 
officer who fell in the evacuation of Peters- 
burg; he seemed to prefer to die with the 
Southern cause. A marble cross is at the 
head of Gen. R. H. Chilton, for some time 
Gen. Lee's Adjutant-general. And all over 
the grounds are small monumental stones 
beneath which lie the bones of officers of all 
the lower grades of service, many from the 
Gulf States. Gen. Pickett's grave is un- 
marked; it is on " Gettysburg Hill," to the 
north of the great Confederate pyramid. 
Among other as yet unmarked graves known 
to me are those of Maj. John Stewart Walker, 
who fell at Malvern Hill (one of the best 
Methodists who ever lived in Richmond, and 
a man of noblest type), and that true-hearted, 
brave, and faithful soldier, Maj. Walker's 
brother-in-law, Col. John M. Otey, the Ad- 
jutant-general of Beauregard and Johnston 
in the West. Few lives have ever had such 
a record of faithful self-sacrifice and devo- 
tion to those he loved as that which ended 
just two years ago in Col. Otey's death. 
Sweet as the roses that bloom at his head is 
the odor of such a life. 
14 



210 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



Xo profession is more folly represented in 
Hollywood than the medical. Faithfully 
laboring to delay the coming of their patients 
to its sheltering protection, they have them- 
selves found there, from the impartial sep- 
nlcher, a welcome. In old age, in the prime 
of life, and in youth, these disciples of Escu- 
lapius have taken the "medicine" which, 
like Raleigh's death-ax, is " sharp, but cures 
all diseases.*' The love and care of -the 
poor'* is mentioned on some of these doc- 
tors* tombs. Happy men! who sweetened 
the bitter potion of poverty, and who are 
sadly missed by the humblest and poorest 
patient. The late Dr. James Bolton is buried 
beneath one of the prettiest of the Tennes- 
see marble monuments. Xear him lies his 
son, the young engineer, whose life was sac- 
rificed by the caving in of the Chesapeake 
and Ohio tunnel under Church Hill— an 
ugly, dark hole that I never go through 
without a feeling of recoil, and which should 
never have been constructed. 

One notices the great number of columns 
made of James River granite. This excel- 
lent stone, which for building purposes and 



Monuments in Hollywood. 



211 



paving is finding its way into every part of 
the Union, is found in abundance on both 
sides of the river above Richmond and op- 
posite to it. It takes a beautiful polish, and 
is as durable as "the everlasting hills " out 
of which it is quarried. Of the scores of 
monuments made of it, the finest is the Ma- 
sonic monument to Dr. Dove, Grand Scribe 
of the Grand Lodge of Virginia for more 
than forty years. It is very near the canal, 
and with the smaller but still noble column 
in memory of James R, Branch (cut off in 
the prime of life and mid-career by the fall- 
ing of a bridge in 1869), and the monument 
of Mr. Larus recently erected, forms a prom- 
inent part of the view from all points along 
the river. Around the monument of their 
great old Secretary the Masons have bur- 
ied many of their brethren. Dr. Henkle's 
wooden head-board, as I have before stated, 
is here. The Masonic order have rewarded 
forty years' service with a noble structure; 
the Church has allowed a true and holy man, 
who served at her altars for an equal length 
of time, to slumber for twenty years under 
the sign of a pine plank! 



212 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



Of monumental sculpture there are many 
examples in the tombs of Hollywood, chiefly 
over the graves of women. One on a man's 
near President Monroe's is a bowed figure 
wholly covered with drapery through which 
the figure is dimly discernible, suggestive of 
perfect abandonment to grief. Other figures 
represent angelic pity or consolation. Ferns, 
lilies, and other flowers are in chiseled abun- 
dance, and occasionally there are small re- 
cumbent statues. In one place there is a 
round stone column about ten or twelve 
feet high, with a fiat cap-stone and heraldic 
shield, unlike any thing else in the cemetery. 

As to inscriptions in general, it may be 
said that very many are brief, names and 
dates only: some are puerile and inappro- 
priate; a few are in German (one of a youth 
near Dr. Duncan's grave contains the first 
verse of Count Zinzeudorf's hymn, so well 
translated by John Wesley, beginning, "Je- 
sus, thy blood and righteousness"). One on 
the tomb of a railroad employe, killed in a 
collision, is a singular poem of three stanzas, 
full of metaphors derived from his calling. 
Those which I read with never-exhausted in- 



Monuments in Hollywood. 



213 



terest are expressive of Christian faith and 
hope and resignation. In the Catacombs of 
Rome, amid the horrors of persecution, the 
hunted and despised followers of Jesus left 
on the walls of the gloomy refuge, which was 
sanctuary and charnel-house in one, the im- 
perishable record of their high faith. On 
the graves of Anglo-Saxons, the great civiliz- 
ers of the world, that faith, after eighteen cent- 
uries, still utters no uncertain sound. The 
gospel which " hath brought life and immor- 
tality to light" swallows up "death in vic- 
tory/' 5 One of the most perfect of these 
Christian inscriptions in Hollywood, ingeni- 
ous, but not labored, is on the head-stone of 
Mrs. Susan Morton Hoge, wife of Rev. M. D. 
Hoge, D.D.: "From a Life of Love, through 
a Death of Peace, into an Eternity of Glory.* 7 
On the shaft which marks the resting- 
place of a young lady is this language: "Her 
last words, 'My trust is in my Saviour. I 
die without a doubt or fear.'" What other 
people besides Christian believers " die with- 
out a doubt or fear? " In apathy, in reckless 
bravado, in stupidity, or with inward trem- 
bling or fearful anxiety, men may die who 



214 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



know not the Lord Jesus. And if in outward 
calmness or philosophic dignity, vet with 
what uncertainty and doubt! But the Chris- 
tians (i die well; " old or young, cultured or 
rude, rich or poor, in prosperity or at the end 
of crushing adversities and losses, they 
breathe their life out sweetly w T ho lean their 
heads on the bosom of Jesus. From the 
grayes of these young and inexperienced be- 
lieyers, little known out of their immediate 
families, no less than from the tombs of 
saints like Plumer and Jeter, and Bishops 
Moore and Domett, and Drs. Ho^e and Dun- 
can, the victorious shout arises, caught up 
by the millions of Christians who yet remain 
alive: " death! where is thy sting? 
grave! where is thy victory? Thanks be 
unto God, which giveth us the victory 
through our Lord Jesus Christ. ' ; 



An Elocutionary Pulpit. 



215 



No. 34. 

AN ELOCUTIONARY PULPIT. 

OME days ago I was reading the 
preface of a work, a valuable work " 
in its department of knowledge— 
44 Gymnastics of the Voice," by Oskar Gutt- 
mann. In referring to the defective elocu- 
tion exhibited, most of all in the ministerial 
profession, the clever author says: 

64 The remark often heard in this respect, 
that a pulpit speaker ought only to care for 
what he says, not how he says it, cannot be 
made any longer. How can a perfect sermon 
be brought to a true appreciation without a 
perfect delivery? Let less stress, therefore, 
be put on the sinful state of man, and more 
stress on the sinful neglect of a true aesthetic 
form and culture, and let there be given a 
good example in this respect by an artistic 
training and cultivation of nature's gifts; 
for only in this way can the true moral sense 
in the people be fed and cultivated. Let the 
people be attracted and accustomed to go to 
church by the perfection of pulpit oratory. 




216 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



Let the noble thoughts be clothed in a noble 
form/' 

This language is not only a specimen of 
the notions of many men as to the function 
of the pulpit, but it is a type of the thoughts 
in which a considerable class of persons com- 
fort themselves in the utter neglect of wor- 
ship and attending church. They may ad- 
mit the intrinsic nobility of the thoughts 
contained is very much Christian preaching, 
but they beg to be excused from listening to 
those which ape not " clothed in a noble 
form" according to a standard quite as high, 
perhaps, as that of Mr. Guttmann. And as 
few if any clergymen, by natural gifts and 
cultivation, attain to this " form," these very 
particular hearers are content to gather their 
ideas of morality and religion from books and 
newspapers, or perhaps the " noble form " of 
the actors in theaters. With them manner 
is every thing. The matter may be the voice 
of God to man on the subjects of greatest 
importance to man, but it must be treated 
with contemptuous indifference, not to say 
received with disgust, unless voice, gesture, 
modulation, emphasis, combine to constitute 



An Elocutionary Pulpit. 217 



"a noble form" considered from the stand- 
point of the professor of elocution. Before 
discussing this unsound view, let me hasten 
to say how highly I value the gifts of nature 
for delivery and real cultivation of a high 
order in elocution. Blessed is that preacher 
whose voice is like a lute; whose " bodily 
presence" is not at all "contemptible/ 5 but 
commanding and attractive; whose utterance 
and gesticulation are natural, easy, pleasant, 
impressive; whom it is a pleasure without 
drawback to hear. As to your actor-like 
preacher, whose art is not well concealed, 
whose delivery smacks strongly of affectation, 
whose voice is artificial and gestures studied, 
though his articulation be distinct and ex- 
act, though his postures be graceful, and his 
tones graduated to the emotions supposed to 
be expressed, now by whispering and now by 
a fierce gnashing of teeth, I prefer, for my 
part, the awkwardest boy in "the saddle- 
bags class" of the itinerant seminary. He, 
at any rate, is simple, earnest, and means all 
he says; a blunderer, and at times somewhat 
ridiculously so, he may be, but he is thinking 
about something else than the effect he is 



218 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



producing by his manner. Perhaps a great 
soul of love and faith and eloquence, like 
Marvin's, is concealed for the time by that 
boorish manner and that unlovely exterior. 
AVhat possible objection can be made to Mr. 
Guttmann's " Let the noble thoughts be 
clothed in a noble form?" By all means, if 
possible. Nothing is sacrified, but much 
gained, by the attainment of that end. 

But when he talks about laying " less 
stress" on "the sinful state of man;" and 
that "the true moral sense in the people" 
can be "fed and cultivated" only by "artistic 
training and cultivation of nature's gifts'' in 
the preachers, so that "a good example" 
shall be given "in this respect," and that 
people can be effectually " attracted and ac- 
customed to go to church by the perfection 
of pulpit oratory" — to all this I most decid- 
edly object. It is, as I conceive, a complete 
misunderstanding of the true functions of 
the ministry, of the real state of the human 
race, and of the agencies which can be suc- 
cessfully employed to convert and sanctify 
men. Is it a time when iniquity abounds, 
and the love of many waxes cold, to lay "less 



All Elocutionary Pulpit. 219 



stress upon the sinful state of man?'' Upon 
what shall we put stress? How ridiculous, 
to a man in earnest, who really believes man 
to be sinful and lost, to think of stressing 
any thing else ! And for a teacher of preach- 
ing to tell his students that they have heard 
enough about man's ruin and redemption, 
and it is time they felt less the importance 
of that and gave heed to the more necessary 
theme of their "sinful neglect" to make the 
right tones and right gestures! And as to 
" attracting men and accustoming them to 
go to church," clo preachers who excel in elo- 
cution always have more hearers? Houses 
will not hold the people who go to hear 
Moody, but he is no orator, and I suspect 
never read a work on delivery and elocution 
in his life. People overflow the churches 
where Sam Jones speaks, murdering elocu- 
tion in every sermon, knowing as little of it 
as a calf does about the opera. But if there 
be anything on which Moody and Sam Jones 
put stress, it is ''the sinful state of man." 
And as men are sinners, and their sins in- 
volve tremendous consequences, it is a theme 
with powerful fascination after all. There 



220 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



is no other more fascinating, save one, and 
that is the other and even more approved 
theme of the two evangelists — namely, the 
Redeemer and Saviour of sinners. Let these 
be handled with earnestness, force, faith, and 
simplicity, with directness and pungency, 
and men will come to church. Or if they 
stay away, not all the elocution from the 
time of Demosthenes to that of Guttman 
would bring or save them. " The god of 
this world has blinded the minds" of such 
men; they may make an occasional excur- 
sion to hear some pulpit lecturing to kill the 
heavy hours of a Sunday, but going or tarry- 
ing with any serious intent is not in all their 
thoughts. 

Whether we consider the duty of preach- 
ers, or the effect they produce, or the ques- 
tion of acceptableness, every thing is against 
this theory of laying chief stress on manner 
and trying to convert the world by " excel- 
lency of speech." Indeed, St. Paul, the 
greatest of Christian ministers, reminds the 
Corinthians that when he came to them de- 
claring the testimony of God it was "not 
with excellency of speech or of wisdom." 



An Elocutionary Pulpit. 221 



And that he meant that he came without 
graces of elocution or oratory is very certain, 
for these had always been much cultivated 
among the Greeks, and orators and actors 
abounded with that polished and inquisitive 
people. But Paul did not, on that account, 
give up putting stress on the great doctrines 
of the gospel, but 66 in weakness and much 
trembling" he sought the divine power and 
preached " with the Holy Ghost sent down 
from heaven." To substitute elocution for 
that is like trusting in " Baal-zebub, the 
god of Ekron." Conceding the desirable- 
ness of pleasing men with voice and manner, 
where possible, it is nevertheless all-impor- 
tant to maintain the position that men are 
not to come to church to be entertained. 
Drive that idea out of their heads, not by re- 
pelling them from the sanctuary by unpleas- 
antness of delivery, eccentricity of manner, 
and disregard of common sense in speaking, 
but by presenting the subjects of sin and re- 
demption in such overwhelming contrast to 
all else, and with such pointed application, 
that they shall not be able to give a serious 
thought to the subject of elocution. Men in 



222 Recreations of a Presiding Elder. 



battle, exposed to a fire of grape 'and canister, 
do not have time to admire the mechanical 
dexterity and perfection of the apparatus 
which pours upon them the " hail of death," 
nor are they in a mood to discuss questions 
of projectiles and elevation. 



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Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
(724) 779-2111 

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




017 526 470 A 



